Business
Ghana’s Smart Start Provides Entrepreneurs with Financial Solutions
The website offers a business collection of Start Smart consultancy books by Taylor, and an app calledPocket Consultant, but the startup’s main product is the access to the Start Smart financial cloud service. An annual subscription costs a bit more than US$100 (306GHC), a six month trial about US$50, while anyone can sign up for a free monthly trial.
Taylor says that Start Smart aims to have a broad impact while at the same time remaining sustainable. As such, the startup adopted a “low price, high volume” model, which focuses on pricing products affordably and leveraging high volumes to generate profits.
Helping entrepreneurs get access to formal institutions
Many entrepreneurs in Africa cite access to financing as a major issue. Apart from micro-financing, entrepreneurs often lack access to formal financial institutions because of tedious, complicated administration on their end or maladministration on the other. Limited access to funds is one of the major factors explaining the development of the informal economy, which the African Development Bank Group estimates to account for as much as 55% of the region’s total GDP.
With a service like Start Smart, entrepreneurs are able to keep track of and record their business performance, which could better their chances of receiving a loan from a bank to help it grow further. “We are servicing SMEs who require and basic tools to improve their record keeping and governance structures, in order to make it easier for them to access resources such as funding,” echos Taylor.
The company is currently self-funded by Taylor but will most likely look for venture capital as it is set to expand soon. Start Smart currently only operates in Ghana, but its long-term goal is to engage with businesses in all of Africa’s entrepreneurial hubs, particularly Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa and Uganda.
Copyright VentureBurn 2014
