Xetova, a Kenyan startup which provides technology solutions to the procurement ecosystem is deploying technologies that enable information on market opportunities accessible to traders. The startup is now building a network of large, medium and small enterprises, which will be used to draw insights and foresights on market opportunities and risks.
Founded in 2019,Xetova aims to ensure that trade trends, reports and highlights are authentic by positioning its network on data from its insights service, which businesses use to interpret data on supply chains, spend, revenue and general management performance into actionable insights.
“We are building a trust network that, for example, allows a company in Kenya to know who to work with in a country like Nigeria, South Africa. This trust network can only be built with the ability to collect verifiable data and the company is working on the largest trade intelligence and supply chain support network. said Bramuel Mwalo, Xetova founder and CEO
The insights service is the first in Xetova’s suite that clients sign up before subscribing to others such as, trade financing and linkages to wide trade networks.
According to Mwalo he’s interest in African trade was driven by a research he participated in, which found that entrepreneurs have a high chance of success if they gain access to large procurement deals and less fragmented distribution channels.
“That finding made me curious about B2B trade, large supply chains and how entrepreneurs in Africa access large procurement opportunities. I developed this theory that data can significantly drive trade and how businesses access opportunities, manage risk and relate to each other,” said Mwalo.
Mwalo noted that his PhD thesis explored ways of getting B2B data accessible in the sense that everybody in Africa who’s trying to do business should actually access data on opportunity, and risk and network. According to him,this information should be readily available to the market and should significantly change how trade is done, because at the end of the day, we perceive risk differently.
Mwalo also worked at Kountable, a financier that provided loans to SMEs which are locked out of formal institutions because of lack of collateral.In his two years as a Kountable executive, he says, they financed $32 million worth of deals, supporting 200 entrepreneurs in several countries including Kenya and Rwanda. It was hard for them to scale lending, even with a $150 million line of credit, due to lack of verifiable data on the operations of many enterprises.
“Initially, business went really well, and the uptake was fantastic. The challenge came when we needed to scale beyond the 200. Every time we started engaging businesses outside our network, we lost money. Their needs were growing too fast, faster than our ability to do due diligence,” Mwalo said.
He then realized that the biggest issue in trade within Africa is not capital, but lack of information such as where value, security and returns are.
This experience drove him to launch Xetova to ensure that businesses understand and unlock the value of the data they possess, use it to inform solutions for their challenges and demonstrate how it can be harnessed at scale for trade intelligence that which can open new partnerships and bigger markets.
This is in addition to making it possible for businesses to access loans based on their own data and insights, which are used by lenders within Xetova’s networks to offer tailor-made loans.
Apart from serving enterprises, Xetova also works with government agencies , which it is helping to improve efficiency in healthcare by providing insights on consumption, distribution, procurement spending, supplier and payment performance.
By December last year, the company had booked $2.45 million in revenues , and facilitated trade finance upto $7 million .The company is now seeking to expand its customer base from the current 60 large enterprises to 300 in the next 18 months.
The firm is also planning to sign up 10 major distributors in Africa, to increase access to over 10 countries from the current seven and to facilitate $20 million in trade finance.
