Shika
The first bet. Proved the thesis, built the category, ended in an exit and an industry body.
The problem
In 2016, the gap between salaried Kenyans and credit was absurd. Banks took weeks and demanded collateral. M-Shwari and KCB-Mpesa were starting to move but capped at small tickets and rigid terms. Millions of working Kenyans — drivers, teachers, traders, salaried staff in informal arrangements — needed working capital in hours, not weeks, and at amounts that actually moved the needle on a household budget.
What I contributed
Co-founder & CEO
We built Shika as a mobile-first digital credit product — application to disbursement in under five minutes, repayment via M-Pesa, underwriting powered by alternative data. I co-founded it under the Alternative Circle umbrella, led the seed raise from CreditInfo, and ran it as CEO through to exit. The hard part was never the technology. The hard part was building the underwriting model, the collections discipline, and the customer trust that made the unit economics work at scale.
Outcome
Shika raised $1.1M from CreditInfo in 2017 — at the time, one of the largest seed cheques into a Kenyan digital credit company. The product scaled to hundreds of thousands of users. We exited in 2020 on terms that returned the thesis. Equally importantly, the work of running Shika forced the founding of DLAK in 2019 (later DFSAK) — the industry body that became the bridge between digital lenders and the Central Bank of Kenya during the DCP regulatory crisis.
Highlights
- Raised $1.1M from CreditInfo in March 2017 — Kenyan Wallstreet, TechMoran covered the round
- Mobile-first product — application to disbursement under 5 minutes via M-Pesa
- Helped define the digital credit category in East Africa alongside Tala, Branch, M-Shwari
- Founding member of DLAK (Digital Lenders Association of Kenya) in 2019
- Exited in 2020 on terms that validated the long-hold thesis