EBBY GATAMU H’24
Building last-mile lending infrastructure for Africa's informal sector
Sub-Saharan Africa’s informal sector is responsible for 80% of all jobs and accounts for 55% of its GDP. But only 20% of traditional credit flows to the informal sector, which has encouraged microlenders to step in to fill this credit gap. Microlenders are similarly faced with inefficient manual operations and they lack access to the collateral required to access credit, typically relying on self-funding and loans from family and friends.
Gatamu grew up in Kenya where her family ran a small business and she saw firsthand how difficult it was and still is to access credit. According to the World Bank, the SME financing gap in sub-Saharan Africa is at least $300 billion and she wants to play a role in closing this gap by empowering microlenders, who understand the micro and small enterprise segment, with the software and financing they need to serve a segment that has long been underserved. She co-founded Cladfy in 2022 and believes that supporting micro and small businesses with the capital they need, will lift everyday Africans out of poverty.
Powering African Microfinance
Leveraging tech to ease lending to micro and small businesses in Africa
Gatamu and her team conducted more than 250 face-to-face interviews with microlenders, microfinanciers, savings and credit cooperatives (saccos) and banks to find out what their challenges were before launching Cladfy in 2022. Cladfy runs a B2B business model with microlenders as their primary customer. Its flagship solution is called CashIQ, a credit profiling software that converts verifiable, third-party alternative data into a credit profile of a potential borrower. This enables lenders to serve the largely informal sector whose financial information is largely only available in mobile money or bank statements. Cladfy also provides lenders with loan management software and finally connects them to liquidity partners who finance their loan books.
Cladfy has enabled over 40,000 small businesses to access over $3,000,000 in working capital and serves dozens of lenders. Gatamu’s goal is for Cladfy to be Africa’s shopify for lenders.
LEARN MORE ABOUT CLADFY
Cladfy provides microlenders with affordable, last-mile lending software and access to collateral-free loan book financing.
Revenue-based finance for Africa
ABOUT EBBY GATAMU
Gatamu has a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing from the University of Nairobi and certification from the Chartered Institute of Marketing. She’s also a chartered accountant (ACCA) and a KPMG-trained auditor. She holds a certification in Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise from Colorado State University.
In 2024, Cladfy was a Fintech finalist at the Singapore Fintech Festival, secured an International Finance Corporation female founder fellowship and secured a VISA grant. In 2023, Cladfy was recognised by the Yale Africa Start-up Review and was part of Techstars’ 1st cohort in Africa.
I AM A HARAMBEAN
As a female African Founder, Gatamu believes that as a Harambean, she will be able to inspire more African women who are keen to pursue entrepreneurship as a career path. She attributes her success to having had successful women that she could look up to and emulate and who made her believe anything was possible if she put her mind to it. She believes that Africans who have been fortunate enough to be well educated have a duty to leverage what they’ve learned to help others to succeed on the continent.
“I’m working to ensure that micro and small enterprises have every opportunity to thrive by leveraging my expertise in Finance, Marketing and Tech.”