Bulls n Bears Entrepreneurship Zone :: The journey so far: Farida Bedwei, CTO, Logiciel

[Bulls n Bears]

 <http://www.nedbank.co.zw/> 

 

 

 

Farida Bedwei is the co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of
Logiciel, a Ghanaian fintech company that develops banking systems for the
microfinance industry and technology solutions which promote financial
inclusion for the unbanked. Bedwei and her co-founder, Derrick Dankyi, CEO
of Logiciel, answered our questions.


1. Tell us about one of the toughest situations you’ve found yourself in as
a business owner.


Our technology partners had a glitch in their system which had a massive
negative impact on our infrastructure. Since we didn’t anticipate such a
situation happening, we didn’t have any safeguards or recovery plans in
place to mitigate the situation. This affected 40% of our clients and caused
us to have a downturn of 30% in our yearly gross revenue. Our reputation was
affected, we lost some clients and couldn’t meet our sales targets.

Due to the nature of our business we had to engage the industry’s regulator
and other stakeholders and inform them about the incident since it prevented
the affected clients from meeting their regulatory obligations. It took the
majority of the affected clients about three to four months to recover and
normalise their operations, and we rendered our services for free during
this period.

We had to work extended hours and train client-facing staff extensively on
how to handle hostile clients. We switched technology partners and put in
measures to ensure we could fully recover within a 12-hour period, should an
incident like this recur.


2. Which business achievement are you most proud of?


The ability to build a core banking platform to digitalise the operations
of the institutions which bank/lend to the informal sectors.

With over 250 institutions – made up of microfinance institutions,
microcredit institutions, credit unions and micro-savings institutions known
as “Susu collectors” – we are the leading core banking platform used by this
sector. We did it with 90% of our staff learning and gaining technical and
industry knowledge on the job.


3. Describe your greatest weakness as an entrepreneur.


Empathy: towards both our clients and our staff. This has sometimes made it
a bit difficult making some decisions which would impact either our clients
or staff negatively, sometimes to the detriment of the business.

Since these institutions are helping deprived communities, we feel
compelled to assist them in any way we can. A typical example would be
undercharging for services because a client needs it but can’t afford the
going price. We have had to hire managers with no-nonsense attitudes who can
be firm when dealing with clients and staff.


4. Which popular entrepreneurial advice do you disagree with?


Mentorship is integral to one’s success as an entrepreneur. We have had
difficulty – individually and collectively – finding mentors who we can
relate with. Over the years we’ve both had short-lived mentors due to lack
of understanding of our business model and inability to schedule regular
catch-ups with mentors due to time constraints.

We have made many mistakes along the way and while the advice of a mentor
may have deterred us from a few, we’d still have ended up largely along the
same path because of the instability and lack of expert knowledge in the
industry combining technology and informal banking.


 5. Is there anything you wish you knew about entrepreneurship before you
got started?


Greater insight into the informal banking industry would have been helpful.
This industry has been fluid for a long time and it’s only within the past
10 years regulations and standards have come into play.

We have had to learn about the industry while developing for it. If we’d
had expert knowledge beforehand we’d have been able to accomplish a lot more
in the past six years we’ve been in business.


6. Name a business opportunity you would still like to pursue.


There’s an untapped market when it comes to lending to the informal sector.
People in this sector need microloans for capital top-up, emergency
situations, etc. However, banks are unwilling to lend to them because they
do not have a regular income and collateral.

Analyses have shown that most of the traders in this sector who have access
to microloans, almost always pay back their loans in full if the interest
rates are reasonable, especially the women. With more than 60% of the
population in the informal sector in sub-Saharan Africa, there’s a huge
opportunity for the provision of microloans with low interest rates.—
Howwemadeitinafrica 



Farida Bedwei

 

Invest Wisely!

Bulls n Bears 

 

Telephone:    <tel:%2B263%204%202927658> +263 4 2927658

Cellphone:      <tel:%2B263%2077%20344%201674> +263 77 344 1674

Alt. Email:    <mailto:info at bulls.co.zw> info at bulls.co.zw  

Website:
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bulls.co.zw&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AF
QjCNH8LYgdY55h-XKseuM8Kpr-JKdfhQ> www.bulls.co.zw 

Blog:
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bulls.co.zw%2Fblog&sa=D&sntz=1
&usg=AFQjCNFoIy6F9IXAiYnSoPSgWDYsr8Sqtw> www.bulls.co.zw/blog

Twitter:                  @bullsbears2010

LinkedIn:               Bulls n Bears Zimbabwe

Facebook:
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FBullsBearsZimba
bwe&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGhb_A5rp4biV1dGHbgiAhUxQqBXA>
www.facebook.com/BullsBearsZimbabwe

Skype:         Bulls.Bears 



 

 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: winmail.dat
Type: application/ms-tnef
Size: 159493 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listmail.bulls.co.zw/pipermail/bulls/attachments/20181123/631597e2/attachment-0001.bin>