TechCabal Daily – Moove it!

Moove raises $23 million to give aspiring car owners more options

“Annually, less than a million new cars are sold in Africa while over 17 million new cars are in the US.”

In 2019, Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi stumbled on this surprising fact and then set out to solve this problem.

Which problem?

Many Africans can’t afford new cars because they don’t have access to financing plans tailored to their needs.

The Solution: A few months later, Delano and Odunsi launched Moove, a Nigeria-based mobility fintech startup to democratize vehicle ownership by employing a revenue-based vehicle financing model.

Wow, that’s a lot packed into one sentence.

Yeah, let me break it down. Moove provides loans to mobility entrepreneurs (drivers) and they pay back from the money they make. Sounds simple right?

Moove is partnering with ride-hailing companies to execute this. For example, Moove is Uber’s exclusive car financing and vehicle supply partner in sub-Saharan Africa. It provides loans to these drivers by selling them new vehicles and financing up to 95% of the purchase within five days of sign up. They can choose to pay back their loans over 24, 36, or 48 months, using a percentage of the weekly revenue generated while driving on Uber.

Okay got it. 

One more thing, Moove also makes its loan repayment process more suitable to drivers offering them lower interest rates and initial deposit requirements.

How’s Moove doing?

A year since it began full operations, the startup has been growing 60% month-on-month and operates in Lagos, Accra and Johannesburg.

With the recently secured $23 million Series A funding, Moove plans to grow and expand into new markets. It’s already creating wallets for drivers who do not have bank accounts to make and accept payments, and in the near future looking to create electric and hybrid vehicle fleets.

Read more: Moove raises $23M to create flexible options for drivers to own cars in Africa

Chaka partners with TradingView to help clients better invest in global markets

Safaricom’s growing customer loyalty scheme

Kenyan telecom giant Safaricom has announced a new partnership with the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) to enable Kenyans to invest in stocks using their accrued bonga points.

Bonga what?

Bonga Points, a loyalty scheme for all Safaricom PrePay and PostPay subscribers. The Bonga loyalty scheme, which was introduced in 2007 to reward customers for using Safaricom’s products and services, has seen both retail and corporate customers accumulate 16 billion points, valued at over KES 4 billion ($38m). Customers accumulate a point for every KES 10 spent on voice, data, SMS, and M-PESA charges.

Notably, Bonga points do not have much value beyond the Safaricom network but Safaricom is working hard to make it more valuable.

How so?

Giving Bonga points more use cases. Already Bonga points can be used to pay for goods and services, as well as electricity bills. Those points came in handy last year during the pandemic when over the period of three weeks, customers redeemed $1.3 m worth of Bonga points in exchange for foodstuff.

Big Picture: From using Bonga points to purchase basic necessities to making investments, at this rate Safaricom is gunning to make Bonga Points a means of payment for everything. A digital currency?

Duo wants to teach you Maths

In the past two years, one of my daily rituals has been completing at least a lesson on Duolingo. To be sincere these days, I think it’s a bit more about keeping my now 429-day streak alive.

Huh, what’s Duolingo?

The popular language-learning app, famous for its whimsical Owl mascot (Duo) and its increasing library of languages. 

It went public last month and revealed for the first time that it had 500 million total registered learners, 40 million active users, 1.5 million premium subscribers, and $190 million in booked revenues in 2020. 

Okay, how does maths come in?

Talking about its plan for the future, CEO Luis von Ahn mentioned that the company plans to expand beyond language learning to include Maths in its offerings.

Interestingly, Duolingo was initially meant to be a maths app, but maths couldn’t pay the bills.

“I love math, but if you learn math, math itself can’t make you any money,” von Ahn said in a previous interview. “You learn math to learn physics to become an engineer, whereas knowledge of English directly improves your income potential in most countries of the world.”

Good thing they chose language learning.

So what are people saying about this?

Many users have expressed mixed feelings about offering math lessons as they feel the company could do better by offering more languages or getting better. It’s still early days and the company admits that there are a few hurdles to cross, as language learning is subject to cultural context and nuance while math is all about getting to the one right answer.

Looking forward: For Duolingo, its expansion plans are hinged on the fact that ultimately it has cracked the ability to entice students to do things you cannot pay them to do, which is to spend time practicing concepts till they’re enforced and ingrained.

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