Indigenous technology companies continue to gain local and international recognition as they commit to making life easy for individuals and businesses by developing innovative products and services. 

The spotlight today is on the team at Built Financial Technologies Limited, a Ghanaian financial technology company (fintech) that is enabling access to business and financial software tools for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Africa.

Early this week, the firm was selected as one of the 60 companies across Africa as beneficiaries of the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund in Africa — an initiative aimed at supporting black-founded startups on the fast-growing technology landscape.

Selected start-ups, per the announcement, would receive non-dilutive awards of between $50,000 and $100,000 and up to $200,000 in Google Cloud credit in addition to hands-on business and technical mentorship from Google’s network of mentors and facilitators, while learning the best practices on a range of tech-related topics and strategies.

The co-founders of ‘Built’ comprising Ms. Mary-Anne Aikins, Ms. Rosemary Kwofie, Mr. Yusif Katulie and Mr. Edward Neequaye are excited about the acknowledgment as the company continues to “build the digital infrastructure that SMEs need to launch, manage and grow their businesses.”

Impact

The young entrepreneurs, in an interview with The Spectator, described the award as a “further validation” of the impact the company had made over the years, indicating that the honour would inspire them to greater heights as they continue to make valuable propositions and stand tall in the financial technology space.

“It is a win for us and for the SMEs we support, as this is going to provide more fuel to keep building relevant solutions for SMEs in the markets we operate in,” Mr. Neequaye, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the company said.

Mr. Katulie noted: “What makes us different is our approach to solving the access to credit gap in the market, first by building a financial operating system for SMEs to handle all financial transactions such as invoicing, accounting, payroll, payments, Point of Sale (POS) and secondly, building an ecosystem/suite of financial services.”

Company

The company has been in existence for the past six years and has supported over 20,000 SMEs.  The ‘Built’ platform, according to the co-founders, currently with over 6,000 businesses, among other things, enables businesses to accept faster payments from their customers, from mobile money to card payments.

Its financial services again allows SMEs to access loans, via a microcredit subsidiary called ‘Thrive Microcredit’, and from financial partners offering insurance, savings, investments, hire purchases, among others.

With subsidiaries in Kenya, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, the company aims to “normalise growth and prosperity for Africa’s SMEs, most of which currently do not grow beyond the level at which they started.”

The company again has the ‘Built Accounting’ mobile application on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store which continues to attract positive reviews from owners of small businesses.

Female co-founders

Rosemary and Mary-Anne, the two female co-founders at the company have an interesting connection and are impressed with their contributions to the growth of Built Technologies. 

They both attended Archbishop Porter Girls’ Senior High School in Takoradi and the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS) where they studied Business Administration, majoring in Accounting, and are now helping to provide solutions to small businesses.

Rosemary Kwofie

Rosemary is an entrepreneur with over six years of experience in finance and management consulting for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) while Mary-Anne is an Entrepreneur and a Chartered Accountant with over six years of experience in accounting, taxation and finance for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

As Chief Operating Officer, she handles business development and partnership with financial service providers and ensures “operational excellence” across various departments of the company.

The passion to co-found ‘Built’, she explained, was born out of her volunteerism with the Yale University alumni and American Field Service (IEP Ghana) where she trained businesswomen in bookkeeping and other trade practices at Yamoransa, near Cape Coast in the Central Region.

“The results of that work inspired me to commit to helping SMEs owners grow and drive financial inclusion for them,” she said.

She was among 24 students selected out of over 1,000 applicants for the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (KL-YES) Programme in the USA, where she lived and studied for a year in Frazee, Minnesota.

She has final level qualification from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) and is currently the treasurer of the KL-YES Ghana Alumni Association. She was Peace volunteer for the 2012 Ghana Elections and worked at University of Ghana Staff Basic School as a volunteer ICT Tutor from 2012 to 2014.

Mary-Anne Aikins

As Chief Financial Officer, she works with the accounting team to provide virtual accounting services to users of the ‘Built’ platform and ensures “risk management practices are in place for disbursement and collection of loans.”

Her passion for helping SMEs build “credible financial profiles” was born out of her stint with the global accounting firm PKF Ghana which gave her insights into the difficulties SMEs face in keeping reliable and adequate financial data.

Over the years, she has trained over 500 business owners on the importance of bookkeeping and how to use technology to improve their operations for growth.

She holds a professional qualifying certification from the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ghana where she is a member and is a student member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, Ghana.

With the support from Google, the team at ‘Built’ say they are “drawing closer” to becoming the most preferred platform for SMEs across Africa.

By Ernest Nutsugah