NewTech Friday : KAYKO – Bookkeeping app for SMEs

Based in Rwanda, KAYKO offers an app that allows small businesses to send invoices and receipts, collect customer debts, manage their stock, and measure their profit and loss. We talk about the company and the app with Crepin Kayisire, is Founder and CEO of KAYKO.

What led to the creation of KAYKO?

When my brother and I were teenagers, our mom left her government job to start a small catering business. We would help her prepare meals and clean dishes during the holidays to earn some allowance. In the beginning, it was thrilling to have a family business. 

As time went by, we realized some of the challenges our Mother faced running her small business. Being very involved in the business's day-to-day operations as she was, our mother didn't have time to properly record cash and credit sales correctly and often mixed up business and personal expenses. Banks constantly rejected her whenever she needed financial support because she did not have professional bookkeeping records.

Without access to working capital, the catering businesses struggled for a long time and eventually shut down two years later. It was a tough time for our family because our livelihoods depended on the company.

A few years later, while attending university, my brother and I teamed up for our final year project to ideate how we would have solved the problem for our mother back then. We discovered that our Mother was not alone in having this problem during our research.

There are, of course, tens of thousands of small enterprises that go out of business every year because of the informal manner by which they conduct their bookkeeping. Most SMEs rely on traditional bookkeeping methods — maintaining ledgers on paper — which is futile when looking for financial support.

What's coming next for KAYKO?

The SME sector is the backbone of Africa's economy, yet it remains financially underserved due to its informal mode of operation.

We realized that equipping SMEs with a simplified ledger app solves half of the problem. A sustainable remedy requires bridging the gap between merchants seeking loans and banks looking for trustworthy debtors.

We intend to do this with KAYKO Capital. KAYKO Capital is an enterprise tool that gives financial institutions access to SMEs in need of business loans together with their authentic audit trail.

KAYKO Capital also helps these institutions automate the loan process with the help of an array of accountability tools. We are currently in talks with a commercial bank and a microfinance firm to pilot a service that will enable KAYKO merchants to access loans from these institutions using their recorded cash flows.

We also urge more banks and financial institutions to come on board KAYKO Capital because our innovation is poised to close one of the most significant market gaps that prevail in our economy. With the help of strong partners, there are limitless opportunities to scale this solution and impact the lives and livelihoods of merchants across the continent.

KAYKO is on a mission to change the narrative of micro-businesses in Africa, where everybody that engages them sees them as high-risk and of no value. We want to enable these hard-working women and men entrepreneurs to get the recognition and support they deserve to move them from the informal economy to the formal economy.