Honorine has been selling fruit in Kigali in her shop and to a few smaller hotels for almost a year and a half now. Through her business many farmers find markets for their products. But she is ready to try and expand this young business. She will be supplying fruit for a school with whom she already had a contract and expand into even more schools. This will help create new jobs in her business and help more small-hold farmers. She is looking for $1700 to grow her business.
Would you help Honorine expand her fresh fruit business?
Note: This is a "Early Growth Loan" (see FAQs below). Honorine will use this loan to grow her existing business from a retail service that also serves a few larger clients to one that services schools and hotels.
Flavia has been in our cohort for 6 months and has been running a small retail clothing business. We have asked her the question "How can you grow your business, have a greater impact and create new jobs?" She decided to try wholesaling to other retailers like she has been. It requires a lot of logistics, but she thinks she can do it! She is looking for $1300 to test this new business idea.
Would you help Flavia run this test and see if she can make a wholesale business work?
Note: This is a "Catalytic Loan" (see FAQs below). Flavia will use this loan to test her business. If her test works, then she will look to grow it further.
Audiobooks are great, but most of those available to people from Africa in other countries are from the West and are in English. What if someone from Ethiopia could listen to books from Ethiopia in his/her own language (Amharic)? Natnael explains his new audiobook business aimed at connecting Africans abroad back to their home cultures!
Note: This is a "Catalytic Loan" (see FAQs below). Natnael will use this loan to test his business. If the test works, then he will look to grow it further.
Dorcus has a dream to build a business selling high-end peanuts (ground nuts in Rwanda). She has already done a small test of 1kg of nuts, and she now wants to try a bigger market test. She is looking for help to buy 45kgs of peanuts so that she can test to see if she can sell all of them during the month of June, 2022. If she can, then she will launch her new business on a bigger scale in October of 2022.
Note: This was a "Catalytic Loan" (see FAQs below). Dorcus will use this loan to test her business. If her test works, then she will look to grow it further.
Janet is a little shy, but she has a great business idea that she wants to grow. She has been selling porridge, which is a staple of Rwandan breakfasts, as a customizable product in the marketplace. But as we have encouraged her to grow, she would like to start selling to schools and businesses in the area. She has one business now that will buy two months worth of porridge, but she needs your help to run this test.
Note: This was a "Catalytic Loan" (see FAQs below). Janet will use this loan to test her business. If her test works, then she will look to grow it further.
What if you were a single person with no laundry facilities, but could open an app, enter the number of loads of laundry you have, and someone would come pick it up and then deliver it to you clean and folded? Rekik and Selamawit share their ideas for a delivery laundry service.
See more details about their business on their profile here
Eyouel is trying to develop a safe, online marketplace for Men's Fashion, where Ethiopians can feel secure about their purchases and the prices.
See more details about his business in his profile here.
Betty is building a business around providing quality commodity food products for schools so children have good food and she can create new jobs in Kigali.
What if you had an opportunity to invest directly in a industry that was lucrative, stable, needed your investment, and impacted the community around you. Hallelujah explains how his teams platform does that for the poultry industry.
See more details about their business on their profile here.
Peace is creating a business by selling the honey from local farmers around Kigali to support them and to create new jobs.
Bonnie has always loved farming, coffee, and being connected to the land. Now, as he has developed connections in the US through ECatalyst who are interested in coffee business, he wants to help farmers of Rwanda by exporting coffee beans and starting an export business. To test this business, he has already sent a few samples, but shipping of course is one of the more important aspects of a coffee exporting business. So for now he has arranged a test of buying100kgs of coffee from his farmers in Rwanda and shipping it to the US. The US companies will then test their markets and evaluate whether to buy yet more.
Note: This was a "Catalytic Loan" (see FAQs below). Bonnie wanted to use this loan to test his business and see if he should grow it further.
The above entrepreneurs are seeking help to grow early-stage, growth-oriented businesses. These businesses then create sustainable development including jobs in the entrepreneur's developing communities.
There are two kinds of loans an entrepreneur can seek: Catalytic Loans and Early Growth Loans
Catalytic Loans are loans designed to test a market or a process before the entrepreneur launches their business. These tests are typically 1-2 months long and are intended to be paid off as quickly as possible so the entrepreneur can then launch their business afterwards, possibly with a larger loan. These are high risk loans that banks are often unable to give because the entrepreneurs do not have their own collateral or track record. However, most entrepreneurs in the developing world will not be able to launch businesses successfully if they can't test their markets.
Early Growth Loans are loans designed for entrepreneurs who have been in business for less than 1.5 years and are still at a very early and high-risk stage of growth, but who are ready to start expanding their businesses. By providing capital to the banks, we can allow these entrepreneurs to take these risks and launch businesses they normally couldn't launch.
Once the money is raised, it is transferred to our partner banks in Rwanda or Ethiopia, and given out as a 8% interest loan (typical loans are 18-25%). For these two types of loans, ECatalyst and this money then becomes the collateral for the entrepreneur, so they may feel free to take a greater risk and potentially grow their business in ways they could not without access to high-risk capital. If and when these loans are paid back by the entrepreneurs, they are then recycled into matching funds for future loans.
Yes! We are working with local banks to develop loans for entrepreneurs who have been in business longer. We leverage ECatalyst's community and accountability to help the banks de-risk these loans and thus give lower interest rates even when using the bank's capital and the entrepreneur's collateral. These loans also incentivize the entrepreneurs to continue in the ECatalyst community. These also provide entrepreneurs with a path from startup all the way to scale. And then when businesses are fully mature and ready for larger capital, we have several partners who can help engage them with more significant investments.
If the entrepreneur can pay off the loan, then the capital goes back into the bank and is recycled into matching funds for future loans. If a lender wants to re-designate their re-paid capital to a specific entrepreneur rather than have that capital go into matching funds, this is also possible upon request.
Yes, there is a 10% administrative fee added to the amount which the entrepreneurs are requesting. This fee is essential to cover the costs of giving these loans. This fee helps cover the costs of the loan officers which ECatalyst pays for, the making and posting of the videos, financial transfers, and other essential administrative costs which make the loan possible.
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