Manny Anyango is a Kenyan digital communication and social media strategist who runs a chama via a WhatsApp group. Chamas, informal micro-savings groups and lending groups, are popular in Kenya and East Africa. Like the ajo in Nigeria or stokvel in South Africa, members pool their money to invest, save, or lend to other members at low or no interest. These groups are not just micro-savings. They also form small, close-knit communities in which members fundraise to support each other during times of need or for social causes.
The majority of these groups use social messaging apps such as WhatsApp to track member contributions. According to Anyango manually updating names and contributions is more difficult than using crowdfunding apps such as M-Changa or GoFundMe.
According to Anyango, “People join, leave or change numbers and keeping track of who paid is a constant battle.”
You need to remember the amount in your mobile money wallet or you can trace back to the first amount and who sent it and manually add the total countless times,” says Eddie Saroni. He is a social media marketing expert who manages a WhatsApp group for Arsenal FC fans with 258 members. “Updates flow in, people call to ask why you haven’t added their names and balances yet, etc.” It’s messy.”
WhatsApp offers more transparency and accountability in a market with low trust like Kenya.
By 2023, a 23-year-old student will be a university professor. Danche Nganga (19459010) came up with the idea of creating a crowdfunding alternative which worked on Telegram and WhatsApp, where people were already trying keep track of communal fundraisers. Nganga was studying Applied Physics & Computer Science at Multimedia University of Kenya when he first came up with the idea. He was discussing it with his partner who was trying to support a fundraising for a cousin who had passed away.
Nganga says, “I suggested that we create a payment pool (a term used informally to describe a communally raised fund) where you could send money and [receive] automatically receive the funds.
We argued a bit, but I remembered that contributors like to track the contributions raised via WhatsApp. He says that was the beginning.
Real-time chatbots
OneKitty is the product that resulted from this conversation. It’s a crowdfunding app that integrates social messaging chatbots to provide real-time updates on contributions to all members of the group. This eliminates the confusion, delays, and hassles of managing contributions manually. It also brings transparency to the process by giving each member of a community the same insight into the communal pot. Nganga says that while crowdfunding platforms like M-Changa or GoFundMe have become popular in Kenya, the ability to track the progress of campaigns and provide contributors with real-time updates was not available on either service. Nganga, the technical leader of the startup, sought out Shem Maina (28 years old) for his operational expertise. Shem joined the company as chief finance officer and operations officer. “My background isn’t in IT and Computer Science, like many techies,” explains Maina. He holds an MBA in Strategic Management at the same university.
After they developed a product, they teamed up to run AB tests on friends and classmates from their university and church. They attracted both organic and referral responses. The co-founders stated that one of their first challenges was building a platform which was simple and worked from end to end. They also struggled to gain user and partner confidence and enter the market.
Nganga says that explaining how the product worked was not enough because most Kenyans were sceptical about sending money online. Maina says that the app’s success has been attributed to its integration with peer-to-peer payment services such as SasaPay. OneKitty’s founders claim that a dedicated financial fraud team and an AI monitoring system are some of the safety measures they use to mitigate fraud. Its chatbot allows groups to select as many or as few signatories to authorise withdrawals in order to avoid embezzlement. Since its launch in Nairobi, OneKitty’s team of hybrid employees has worked out of the Nairobi head office. They claim to have facilitated over 10,000 campaigns of fundraising for over 200,000 Kenyans.
Differentiating yourself from competitors
OneKitty co-founders claim that their WhatsApp chatbot integration is what sets them apart from their competitors. They have not yet launched a chatbot on Telegram. Maina: “Our competitors are not using WhatsApp. All of them, in fact. Statista estimates that the number of Kenyans using WhatsApp will reach 15,31 million out of the country’s 22,7 million internet users within the next four-year period. Chatbot integration allows a fundraising community to see real-time contributions on a messaging application they use often. They can also see when withdrawals have been made and by who. According to Maina, OneKitty is the most affordable solution on the market right now. OneKitty charges 2.5% on withdrawals of all contributions. While GoFundMe has a 2.9% + $0.30 fee per donation deducted from total funds raised and M-Changa has a standard platform charge of 4.25%, OneKitty only charges 2.5%.
The company charges 2% for chama contributions and 5% on events. The WhatsApp bot can be used to sell tickets at events, according to the co-founders.
OneKitty competes with platforms such as Thundafund and GoFundMe. It also competes with platforms like Safaricom’s M-Pesa, whose Paybill product offers long-term and short-term crowdfunding solutions for individual and institutional projects.
The majority of these platforms use an all-or nothing fundraising model, which means that campaign managers can only get their funds if their fundraising goals are met. OneKitty doesn’t use this model. It offers flexibility and allows projects to receive all funds raised. This is great for smaller community initiatives or emergency situations.
Other crowdfunding platforms like StartSomeGood and Indiegogo, an Australian platform that operates in Kenya, offer similar flexibility. However, apps like Indiegogo are PayPal-required and have restrictions on the types of campaigns you can run. Vincent Kimosop is an economist and fintech specialist who believes that global crowdfunding platforms have a major disadvantage. He says the high rates and inability to connect with consumers in a way they can relate to are their biggest drawbacks. Kimosop said to TechCabal that it’s important for a product to trickle down to people in a manner that they can relate to.
I think OneKitty targets social context and culture, and has the upper hand when it comes to contracting local celebrities for endorsements. He says that they speak a common tongue with the users.
Saroni and Anyango both say they’ve never heard of OneKitty. Chriss Ndenga, an architect in Nairobi, says he discovered OneKitty while searching online for “a more transparent method for people to donate to different causes.” He had previously manually tracked and tallied donations but was looking for more efficient alternatives. He had contributed to other campaigns via M-Changa or GoFundMe but found OneKitty’s social messaging bot helpful for quick updates and transparency.
I will create a said, “I used it during our game day and other functions and by the time Maggie (his partner’s cousin) died, I had already used it in about five other fundraising forums.” He added that the app was appealing for local campaigns, with shorter deadlines, and for emergency situations. OneKitty is currently only available in Kenya, but plans to expand into Tanzania. The co-founders of OneKitty, who have so far bootstrapped their startup, say they will look for investment to fund an expansion. In the future, they plan to accept card payments.
Enabling communitygiving
OneKitty enabled many heartwarming projects in the community, from a Muslim charity raising money to provide water tanks to children’s homes to a nursing home using the platform to assist the sick for free.
In the aftermath of the infamous floods in Nairobithe co-founders raised Ksh 200,000 ($1,500) for the purchase of food and household goods by residents of Mathare Slum. These causes continue motivating the founders. Nganga says that in some of these projects the startup has worked closely with campaigners, offering rate discounts as a way to be closer to their market.
Nganga says, “These passionate stories inspire us to improve our platform and our delivery.”
