EP32 Evelyn Kaingu: The female CEO elevating FinTech Sector The journey from $0 to securing $8 million Series A Investment

Episode 32 ,Join us on an exciting journey as we delve into the captivating world of FinTech in Zambia with our esteemed guest, Evelyn Kaingu, the inspirational co-founder and CEO of Lupiya. Evelyn shares the extraordinary journey of Lupiya - a pioneering Zambian FinTech that started with a modest $500 and now boasts an impressive series A funding of 8 million. She candidly discusses the trials and tribulations of securing funding, particularly as a woman and Black founder, and underscores the vital role of customer acquisition , retention ,  confidence and data collection in instilling confidence in investors.

Evelyn provides a fascinating insight into the complexities of customer acquisition and retention, the importance of self-care, and the art of team development in a start-up environment. These are the key factors that JamJar Investments consider when making investment decisions. Evelyn's unwavering commitment to work-life balance and her lucid account of the challenges associated with raising funds makes for a riveting narrative. Her story resonates with every entrepreneur struggling to make their mark in an ever-evolving business landscape.

The episode concludes with a reflection on the values and ethics that underpin Evelyn's work and her vision for Lupiya. She recounts her memorable encounter with Vice President Kamala Harris and how Lupiya's actions are geared towards creating a positive societal impact. This episode is a testament to Evelyn's tenacity, resilience, and innovation. Don't miss this chance to gain a unique perspective on navigating the world of start-ups, and the power of believing in people to drive innovative solutions.

0:00 Introduction
0:12 The Journey of Lupiya
10:35 Funding Challenges for FinTech SMEs
24:15 Customer Acquisition, Self-Care, and Team Development
39:15 Values, Ethics, Meeting Vice President Kamala Harris
41:54 Trailblazer takeaways

Follow Evelyn Kaingu 
@lupiyaloans 
https://www.lupiya.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/evelyn-chilomo-kaingu

Mentions 
https://www.lupiya.com/
https://startup.google.com/programs/black-founders-fund/united-states/
https://wegrowwithc3.com/news/us-vice-president-kamala-harris-applauds-zambian-fintech
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/africa-the-big-deal_zambias-lupiya-raises-825m-series-a-round-activity-7109450495055773696-lXrT?trk=public_profile_like_view

Listen : to the audio version Apple Spotify .Amazon Music Google Podcasts
Watch and subscribe to my YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@Thetrailblazersexperience
Follow Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/thetrailblazersexperience/

Transcript

The trailblazer Experience: 0:12

Welcome to another episode of the Trio Blazers Experience podcast, and today we are delving into the world of FinTech, but not FinTech in the first world FinTech in the country of my birth, Zambia, and my guest today is Evelyn Kaingu, who is the co-founder and CEO of Lupiya, which is a Zambian FinTech providing financial solutions for individuals. Businesses in Zambia is she has been described as a FinTech champion. She is also an award winning young leader whose selfless belief in people drives her to innovative solutions that are people centric. Had ideas are well placed in small enterprise and technology. The business has also secured series a funding of 8 million, which is to scale operations in Zambia and beyond. Welcome, Evelyn.

Evelyn Kaingu : 1:13

Thank you so much, entoa, for having me. It's exciting. Wow, I the appellate's there. I'm just like wait, are you talking about me or somebody else? But thank you, I mean girl.

The trailblazer Experience: 1:23

It's always when you hear it back to you. Then you think about all the years when you started the business and it was just you and your co-founder. How to talk to me, because, I mean, I've known you since you were a child, right, and life has come full circle where I'm interviewing you about your business. This is amazing.

Evelyn Kaingu : 1:45

No.

The trailblazer Experience: 1:47

Talk to me about the journey of Lupiya and how it started, because I think it's always good to understand where the idea came from and the journey that you've been on, because we definitely want to empower young founders to keep on going out there.

Evelyn Kaingu : 2:04

Yeah. So I mean it's an interesting one. My co-founder and I, we had a different business, a trading business at the time, and we just didn't fulfill the orders that we were receiving, simply because we couldn't access additional capital from a formal financial institution. We didn't meet, have the requirements that they needed, and so when we went into the informal market, the rates were so exorbitant that we were simply going to be working for these financial institutions to be able to fulfill this order, so that business had to shut down, unfortunately, and it just really awakened that revival in us to say we can actually do it, do it for SMEs alike, and set up this bank that would be able to provide additional capital to the SME space. And so, with just $500, we realized we didn't have enough money to set up a bank. And how are we going to do this? And so we latched out to a community group of women that we then extended this financing to very small loans and from there we were able to turn it around from 18 women to 100 women and eventually we were looking at 300 to 1000 women that we're extending loans to, and so perhaps it gives a lot of validation and traction for an SME to then build onto what they're doing. So we quickly set up a website and from there we were providing online loans, which was a very unheard of or unconventional process in Zambia, but we had seen it in other countries happening. And we just went out there and said, let's try and do it for SMEs alike.

Evelyn Kaingu : 3:46

And as we were setting it up, just that realization that a lot of SMEs was not able to access loans just like us, the realization that 75% of, rather 70% of, the adult population didn't have access to formal financial services, so it just gave us this feel to be on this board ambitious plan with the little funds that we had to go out there and just start perhaps making a small dent. We could the best way we knew how to do it in my little car and bag, which was basically where the loan book would sit in my handbag, and I'd go out meeting community groups, individuals alike, accessing and providing access to a capital. And from then on we had a bit of traction. We were able to get a bit of buy in from family and friends, and so from then on we sort of raised the friends and family round of $50,000. And that sort of helped us grow the business to a point where we were able to get significant investments over million dollars from Enigma Ventures in 2020.

Evelyn Kaingu : 4:54

And, by the way, we started in 2016. And so it's been a long journey of just really experimenting and learning the business and trying to grow as much as we could. And so when Enigma came in, that was like the opportunity for us now to scale the business, and even at the time when Enigma was joining us, covid had just broke out. So there we're almost pulling the plugs and not knowing what would happen to the investment. And so that particular weekend when we got the rejection notice from them, we just went on and completely built the product online.

Evelyn Kaingu : 5:26

I was still hybrid, where we had a website and still had a branch, but we completely shut down the local office, completely built an online platform and from that point on, we saw substantial growth that we had never seen in the business and that completely fueled the L'Elepée model and justifying how we could be an online platform providing funds to access to capital to individuals, smes, and finally, onto this stage of now getting to a Series A round where we have raised $8.25 million in a 10 million Series A round. So we have that last cup to conclude at the end of the year, but very excited to be able to do this and now looking to expand Tanzania and Malawi and so on. An exciting phase for us.

The trailblazer Experience: 6:15

So many things to unpack there, so many things to unpack. So the first thing is, the business started out of a problem you were trying to solve for yourself, so literally because you yourself could not get the funding that you needed and notice that there were exorbitant interest rates out there and said come on this, this could be done much better. And then the second thing that I pulled out is that you were women first. You know thinking about women who have small businesses and how, as we know, women are the bedrock of families, especially in Zambia. They're the ones where the entrepreneurs going out. It's just innate to Nasibe from a culture perspective. And then having the pandemic sort of catapulted you to become mobile first, isn't it?

Evelyn Kaingu : 7:00

Yes, exactly yeah very interesting how we were able to pivot the business completely and have an online business in Zambia. So it's amazing to look at the stats now.

The trailblazer Experience: 7:12

Yeah, so do you want to talk about? So if I was to say an overview of Loupia and the specific financial solutions that are offered, what are sort of like the four pillars of what's offered, then Great.

Evelyn Kaingu : 7:24

So we provide online loans and then we provide online investments, and now we just got licensing from the Bank of Zambia to provide payments, and what we're simply trying to do is provide a holistic financial services platform for our clientele. And what we've also been doing is trying to position as a new bank and with that strategy, we've got into partnership with MasterCard to be able to do this, and so all transactions will be happening on a wallet, where clients can make investments, get loans, transact for online payments, transfer funds from wallet to wallet. At the same time, we also have a special papers vehicle, which is Loupia for Women. So, intentionally, we lend to women specifically. So we have a mandate and it's not an internal mandate, but it's very special to me to just make sure that 40% of our portfolio sits with women and just being intentional about that goal to support women, to try and create a platform that's providing access to capital, and I think we've been intentional around that space.

Evelyn Kaingu : 8:35

We also have an AgriLones product where we are providing access to finance for farmers, and so it's really an interesting space to be in now and just learning. I mean, I think this journey has taken me through hats of an economist in background, then becoming an entrepreneur, and then becoming a farmer, and then becoming a financial expert in the industry and then now as well becoming a turkey, because a lot of building of the platform we've built our platform ground up and so I've seen it come up from as little as processes to being having front end back end user functionality and just starting to learn the process and now becoming a software engineer. So it's really interesting the number of hats this business has taken me to, but it's a challenge I enjoy. So, yeah, it's very exciting.

The trailblazer Experience: 9:32

I think that's one of the things that you learn as you're an entrepreneur, isn't it that you have to wear many hats? And, interestingly enough, I was going to ask about how Lupea is contributing to fostering economic progress in Zambia. I mean, you're doing that through the different pillars, whether it's farming the loans now looking at the tech stack and how that works. What does your team comprise on, and talk to me about your mission and your vision? Now that the business has scaled to this size, what would you say is the mission and the vision going forward for Lupea?

Evelyn Kaingu : 10:08

Yeah, I mean, it's always been really about simplifying those processes for clients. The big thing is that requirements are always very stringent from formal institutions and how anything. For us it became how do we look at alternative data to be able to make these decisions for our clients? And that's what we really embarked on to really reduce what those requirements would look like for our customer base or user base. At the same time, we knew that we're in a space where internet adoption at the time hadn't really grown to where it is now post COVID, and so it was really fine tuning a model and really saying, look, it's possible to really build a low cost model that didn't require branches. What we just needed to do was really instill the confidence in customers and not look like a fraud platform and because there were so many of them at the time and really just building that customer confidence and really saying there's an actual platform out there for women, for individuals, for SMEs that doesn't require stringent requirements to be able to access capital. And that's what we've simply done.

Evelyn Kaingu : 11:18

And as we've also started to scale the business, now we're now positioning Azaneo Bank to look into expanding operations in Zambia and expand to Tanzania, in Malawi, and with this we've really just tried to ensure that we can provide the holistic banking solution for our client base and that's why the wallet is very important for us to really create that ecosystem for the clients.

Evelyn Kaingu : 11:42

The real thing of why we're trying to do this is really that transaction history that we need to track on SMEs to be able to unlearn bigger ticket sizes. Right now we do an average size of $1,000 for SMEs. We've had boundary cases where we've gone all the way to $25,000, but typically we've played in the small space and we have a demand for this clientele and I think our model is very risk. It's a risk-built model and so really to sort of grow into this space and really meet the needs of SMEs, we've sort of taken a stance of how can we be more supportive, have more transaction history, extend more financial services to these clients, and that's sort of where we are positioning as a company and just that vision of trying to see how best we can add additional layers to the products that we provide.

The trailblazer Experience: 12:35

And the value of the business is going to be escalated by the data that you collect, as you know. So, having not the only transaction history, what type of customer, the age, demographic, that's what's going to instill more confidence as investors. Moving forward, let's talk about raising funds for startups, because A we know the stats that 1% of funding doesn't even go to females, I hate to say what percentage even goes to black founders. Share your insights into your experience in securing funding.

Evelyn Kaingu : 13:11

Angela will be on this discussion for hours in the end, and I think if I take you through the journey, you would see that we started in 2016 to get to a point of only getting funding in 2020. And I think it was really going through so many processes of rejecting, rejections, cold calling so many investors, and I think there's a notion or appeal to really seeing that there are platforms out there for women looking to give investments for women. I think I have tried a lot of them, I've tried to meet their requirements and I think it's always been a hard rejection and just really getting the right feedback has been a challenge. And so I think that ecosystem has some work to do, especially for women to be able to support us. And so, through that journey just realizing how our strategy sort of changed into making sure that we were championing who we were and just really by who we were it meant that I had to brand myself better as a CEO, really sure that I'm behind the business and running it. I had to really position the business and do a lot of marketing and brand positioning and just a lot of noise out there, and so if you do see us on social media. There's always a notification or post out there that we need to do and just because we understand the space that we're in and I think we're always fundraising quite frequently and so it's very important that we consistently drama whatever little support that we get or do for that positioning with investors.

Evelyn Kaingu : 14:45

And then, coming to the investment side, it's open, the due diligence processes as well as the valuations and how the value is right. And so there's been a few perhaps intake multiples in the space, especially in Zambia, this track record of exits not being very successful here, and so there's a lot of combination of things that I think going into the space, not realizing and you're penalized for that as an entity and just looking at your valuation, going from what you thought your business was to just an entity bringing you down and saying, no, look, I think this is the space that you are and you're really validated by whatever multiples you're trying to use to evaluate a company. And so, look, we were falling into standards to have done our best to ensure that we position that way. These are our numbers and we can own them, but unfortunately, in parts of the world that we found rates from, that's another challenge. I think a lot of SMEs, individuals or people looking to raise funds will sort of have challenges with.

Evelyn Kaingu : 15:49

And then, yeah, and then just you know, convincing a lot of people is always tough for certain spaces I mean microfinance and FinTech at the same time is a challenge. Everyone looks at the risk profile and what we've seen in this space that you find that people would own lends or invest into you at very high or exorbitant interest rates, which basically just trickle down to our customer base, unfortunately, and so those are just some of the things that have been quite the challenge for us, and finding platforms with the right ticket size for us to be able to tap into at the right rate has been a challenge, and so it's really a combination of so many things that would apply. But, yeah, I mean, the journey is doable. It's taken us about over just 16 months to close a series of fund raise. This would typically take six months or seven months in a Western country, and so just some of the challenges that SMEs face quite some.

The trailblazer Experience: 16:51

Do you know, what I find really good is that you're very humble. So whatever feedback you've taken because I can imagine how many pitch decks you've pulled together from the first one and when you probably look at it and say I can't believe we presented this to actually how you've taken the feedback on board from the various I say the various doors closing that weren't for you, and then I've just built on that to create a viable business that people will listen to you and now you know all the questions, isn't it? You'll go into a meeting and you'll be like, yeah, I know this is working for me. I was reading some stats. So, in terms of Africans, africa's FinTech startup ecosystem is continuing to grow. So the number of startups operating in the space has increased by 17% in 2023 compared to 2021. So it is growing, but there is still more room for improvement.

The trailblazer Experience: 17:48

Do you think? Some of the challenges are that they might be a need for incubator hubs in Zambia or Southern Africa to sort of spearhead this? So one of the things I'm doing now is my next goal for future briefing myself is board advisory and advisor roles, and have really been interested also at looking at SMEs or startups, just businesses that are at the beginning of that stage, because I'm interested in the whole series round and funding and also getting a woman of color in the space I think is a good thing. But a lot of the things I hear is, for example, in Asia they'll talk about incubator hubs where they're grooming these startups and teaching them the know-how. In Europe it's the same thing. In Silicon Valley it's the same. It feels like there's a necessity for something like that in Southern Africa.

Evelyn Kaingu : 18:40

I mean you see a number of them come up right and I think a lot of them are really focused on business modeling, financial modeling, and I think there's always the gap around what happens when you're past that stage. So you validate your model and it's time for you to get into the market and really start to scale your business right, and then the cracks start to seep in. I think a lot of incubators as well, perhaps why they also don't go to that phase of their processes, or perhaps coaching perhaps might be a funding issue as well, and I think there hasn't been a lot of support around incubation, Just really support for that startup ecosystem, and I think we're only starting to see that now, for the first time in country, there have been a few incubators like Bongo Hive, wiac. I came out of WIAC and just that business modeling process that it sort of take you through and I think a lot of pieces that I think I'll probably move a bit faster if I had perhaps a coach, if I had a little bit more incubation, and I think these are things that you simply don't read. I do a lot of reading in between. I don't think it applies in the same context.

Evelyn Kaingu : 20:02

A lot of people sort of don't give back into this space and we're just discussing this, how we've sort of gone through a number of milestones that's to remain undocumented for the FinTech space. Then who gives the FinTech SME coming on to the market this sort of expertise or support, this sort of coaching, post business modeling, post financial modeling? What do they do with the context that they have as we begin to grow? There's things like board capacity. Is there even really capacity by an individual like myself to be able to manage a board of people? So there's investors on the board that have expectations, expect me to deliver on certain expectations and requirements.

Evelyn Kaingu : 20:42

And is this really there in the spaces that we are? And I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done around it. So you are coming into the right space in Tola. When you say there's a lot of support needed on our end and I think that would really be helpful because there's a lot of blanks that you need a lot of time, that is wasted. I wouldn't call it wasted, but a lot of time that you take for you to sort of get to a particular space that could have been done in a much shorter time.

The trailblazer Experience: 21:08

Yeah, definitely as one of the founders. So you were selected for Google's Black Founders Fund in Africa.

Evelyn Kaingu : 21:16

How has this support impacted or accelerated the growth and development of the PNU, as well as as a CEO, I mean, if you had, I think, seen us before Google Black Founders Fund, we're just basically, you know we're going to do it sell mixed sales and that was the whole idea and just generate revenue. But I think the level of how they refined processes and how they think, how they manage teams and just how they have function set up is just, I think, was one of the biggest invaluable things that we got from Google. And so not only was it funding coming in, but how do we utilize this funding, how do we position it for digital marketing and how we acquire customer base, how we manage inbound, outbound marketing and now strategy around that. If you had asked me before that, it was just listing on the digital marketing ads, quickly get a platform, get a consultant and let's make sure they're giving us the numbers. But just really being able to own your processes, I think is one of the biggest insights I got from just having getting the support that we've had from Google and just really refining our business model as well.

Evelyn Kaingu : 22:28

A lot of us will stick to a business model canvas and whatever Google gives us and those plucking numbers there, but I think there's so many layers that come into even you thinking about what's on the business model canvas and how do you start to actualize everything that's happening there and adjusting, starting to own your numbers and looking at it? What does it mean to generate revenue at a certain magnitude and how should we simply be growing on a month-on-month growth trajectory? What are we looking to achieve in the next year, in the next five years? And so it's really just a combination of so many things that were so invaluable, and I'm really grateful that we did it, because Zambia, by the way, wasn't even part of the shortlist countries and now that year, so it wasn't and, like I've said and told, just really positioning as a female brand. I just brought to them and said, look, I'm one of the female founders in Zambia and it really means so much to me that something like Google and the platform or fund like this would make that consideration in a country like this one and for us, and so I think I've really just learned how to drum up the female card roll, which I do as much or as intensely, and I think that's what helps me raise the funds that I raise right now, but I can imagine how people in this space are struggling, but I think it's really finding what works for you and just leveraging that and seeing how it works.

The trailblazer Experience: 23:51

Yeah, but literally also just trailblazing and opening the door for other founders to come through, because the fact that even Zambia wasn't even it wasn't even a country that was considered, so that already is a stumbling block if you're trying to get funding and support, and it feels like they really tortured the building blocks for business, you know, giving you that foundation to keep going. I mean, when we talk about custom acquisition, it's one of the most important things.

Evelyn Kaingu : 24:19

Who is your customer base Will?

The trailblazer Experience: 24:22

they come back, are they?

Evelyn Kaingu : 24:23

going to purchase again. It's half the battle isn't it?

The trailblazer Experience: 24:28

I was at a founders event and one of the businesses that were there, the investment fund, is called JamJar Investments and they were formed by the guys who started the drinks brand Innocent, so they were also similar that they couldn't get any funding. Similar story to yours, you know. They asked family and friends and then, when they grew and finally sold their business to a substantial amount, I think like two days later they started that investment fund Because they knew what it was like and they said one of the things that they look at is, you know, do they like the business, do they like the founders? But also, can you sell your product and is the customer coming back, literally?

The trailblazer Experience: 25:07

So customer retention, customer acquisition, and then afterwards all those other building blocks in terms of is there traction, is the person willing to learn, is there an opportunity for them to be able to exit that business in a few years time for a substantial amount? But lots of learnings there. But those are the kind of sessions we sort of need to be having in Zambia as well. You know, maybe that's a conversation after the podcast, isn't it? How can we support moving forward? I?

Evelyn Kaingu : 25:38

know we need this data and to be able to leverage, so it's really needed at this point.

The trailblazer Experience: 25:44

Exactly so. Let's talk about you, Evelyn. So running a successful startup can be demanding. You know you're a mother, you're a wife, you're a sister. How do you prioritize self care and sort of what practices, routines do you follow to maintain your version of work life balance?

Evelyn Kaingu : 26:05

So I'll be honest with you that I'm still very much trying to figure out where life balance. I think I struggle with that. I've always said my strength is in administration and I think perhaps I pick on it because I think it was my first job out of university and I think I had a very good manager who sort of coached me into that. And I think one of the key things that you always find at Loupia, or that I leverage the most, is the processes are very refined because of that. So I think I play that to my strength, and so everything's very lined up in terms of how I do it, in terms of routines, be it the kids, be it here at the office. Anything that sort of falls off actually keeps me a little bit distracted, and so perhaps that's what really has helped in terms of processes in that regard.

Evelyn Kaingu : 26:54

And then when it comes to self care, I don't do much other than walking and gardening. So I try to walk twice a week, which is apparently very low. I don't get. I don't hit my my steps milestones or my my step targets every every week. But I'm working on that. But I do a lot of gardening. I love to do that every day. So if my son wakes me up at 430, I'm probably just waiting for the sun to come out and I'm already with him into the garden and we'll just try and do whatever we can there. And yeah, and then I do a spa, one spa date every month, which is basically a massage, and that's pretty much all I do for self care and I am still learning the loops of that. I tried yoga. I don't get it. Everyone else, or my friends love it, love it me about being too African around that. So whether that's true or not, I don't know.

The trailblazer Experience: 27:51

Meditation you've already mentioned a lot of things that you're doing gardening, walking and, honestly, the highlight was like spa. I take a spa over yoga anytime.

Evelyn Kaingu : 28:01

Exactly Same here.

The trailblazer Experience: 28:03

So anything that's very practical and dola, I would do it for sure, yeah it feels like self care because it's about defining what works for you in the moment and the stage of you know in your life. So if you've got younger children, it's just different, isn't it? Your time, you know, talking about we talked about this before the podcast started about you know, child working up really early in the morning and then you're you just on the go from then on. So I think it's having that self awareness to say, right, this is what works for me right now, in this stage of my life, and you're choosing things to be fair, evelyn which are taking you away from screen time, you know.

Evelyn Kaingu : 28:43

Yes, cheese.

The trailblazer Experience: 28:44

Getting away from the tech, because you're in tech almost 20, you know they'll say 24, seven getting outside of that, I think is really good.

Evelyn Kaingu : 28:53

Yeah, and I always demo my own. I'm on my screen from eight o'clock until eight PM and it's crazy, so I try to shut down as much as I can, but yeah, the tough one, yeah.

The trailblazer Experience: 29:03

So where's most of your investment come from? Is it from North America or from? So? Is just thinking about time zones? Does that help for you in terms of your working day and space?

Evelyn Kaingu : 29:15

Yes, so luckily. So our initial investor was from the US but based out of Cape Town, so, luckily, same time zone. And our big new investor is from South Africa as well, so same time zone as well. And then we have another investor out to Switzerland, so not so bad on the time zone, but I think we make it work so far and yeah, so it's really worked so far, so it hasn't been a challenge. We have a set meeting dates and times, and so it's clear for everyone's calendar.

The trailblazer Experience: 29:47

Yeah, yeah, and at the moment is the shareholding still you, as majority shareholders. Split equally between the three.

Evelyn Kaingu : 29:55

Yes, so still majority shareholder between my founder and I and everyone else has had to trade and so, yeah, so it's a very tough space and yeah. So, like I was saying, looking to raise more, you've got to let go more, but I think it wasn't the time yet. Yeah, I think it's.

The trailblazer Experience: 30:12

The question is always what's the size of the prize and what is it you're trying to do? So if your goal is to actually completely exit the business, then great. But if your goal is as found as you still want to hold on, then just be. You know, then it's another decision, isn't it?

Evelyn Kaingu : 30:29

It's not a decision altogether. Exactly.

The trailblazer Experience: 30:31

Because it's your baby. It's something that you started from scratch.

Evelyn Kaingu : 30:35

Yeah, and I think as entrepreneurs, we we're always stuck in that mindset and unfortunately we might be stuck in there for too long. But I hope we did make the right decision here and I think there's a few things we still want to see through before we can say it's time.

The trailblazer Experience: 30:50

Yeah, so you've talked about you know I described as a people centric person and that's sort of been your approach to Lupea women. First, how do you encourage and develop your team and what is the size of the team at the moment?

Evelyn Kaingu : 31:05

Okay. So size of the team right now is 28 people and always sitting at 60, 40, so 60% women. So who? Who there? And I think as a startup, I always like to tell them.

Evelyn Kaingu : 31:19

A lot of how we operate is quite unstructured, and I think that's why we also move faster less processes there and so my encouragement as usual is you're in a role for a number of months, learn as much as you can, because it's a growing business. There's always opportunity for us to leverage you in different spaces and that's sort of intentionally how we have done it for women being women first, and I think I don't know if I can announce this here on a podcast, but intentionally we like to just be very centered around things like Mother's Day, women who are nesting watching having additional hours that they can leverage off of that time. So it's not a hard stop that you're reporting at a particular time in the morning. As long as you're tracking well with your okay hours, I'm happy and shouldn't be a problem.

Evelyn Kaingu : 32:13

Yeah, so just being intentional about things like open door policies, how best we can support in terms of like educational needs we have platforms that we pay for that the team can leverage as well, just like a lot of learning support platforms for the team.

Evelyn Kaingu : 32:33

We like to have them sit in really key decision making meetings just for the learning care, just for them to sort of start to get the idea of what we do as well and just a little buy in into the vision of what we do. I do a monthly town hall as well with the team, just to encourage, to motivate, to let them know where we are and just keep positioning, and so I think I felt sort of like the right way to sort of let everyone know where we are and what we need to be doing, to go ahead and also just give a sense of the plans that we have for the team, so how we need to work towards it, and I think that's basically the most that we've been able to do and so still learning and try and see how best we can do it.

The trailblazer Experience: 33:15

And the team is growing, as the you know, not only just from a professional perspective but from a skill perspective, because the business is still evolving and I love the whole thing of you adopting, you know, flexible working and, as long as they're hitting the targets the OKRs, you know that's, that's fine, and I think it's a new way because, obviously, if we think about how our parents grew up and how rigid it was, in terms of having to be in the office from a certain time to a certain time.

Evelyn Kaingu : 33:45

No matter what was happening. I think step in the right direction.

The trailblazer Experience: 33:50

You are wise beyond your words and it feels like you've learned so much from this experience being an entrepreneur. You know, the school of entrepreneurship just teaches you so much highs and lows. Yeah, have you had any mentorship you know to guide you through and what is your view on mentors?

Evelyn Kaingu : 34:10

Yeah, mentors must have they open a different perspective of thinking. I think as we started the business was very what the founders envisioned and what they want to see. And, having sort of gone through the training I did, which is a business modeling toolkit, when I went there I was looking to raise 300,000 culture to be able to on lens to individuals, smes. I don't even know where I was going to find it, but I had to make a will of how I was going to find that money, going for just a simple modeling session program and just them instilling the idea of look, you have shoes that just languishing somewhere. So those that you start up capital just going to the market and quickly start testing your assumptions of whether this is a value.

The trailblazer Experience: 34:59

Gary said that. Have you listened to Gary V? Yes, you always. You will find money in your house somewhere If you need it.

Evelyn Kaingu : 35:08

Yeah, You're going to procrastinate as an entrepreneur, but I think that's mentoring there. Just let me know how. I need to go there into the market very quickly and start validating and testing my assumptions and I need it to fell fast. And so just that mindset change was very helpful. And, having had the nickname adventures also join us in 2020. We have a monthly town hall. We have one on one sessions with the investors and just sort of teaching you how to run a big game.

Evelyn Kaingu : 35:37

I remember we had just got in the million dollar investment and we're three people by the way at the time when we got the investment and we're only trying to go to another, like five months base, and I invest as like look, wait, what are we trying to do? Like are we saving money? Like what are we doing? Like what is your purpose? You know just those concepts and sometimes you'd be like, oh my gosh, spending $1,000 on marketing. It's like, yeah, but you're looking to make a certain extra amount of money. You can make $5,000 really, like what's really the opportunity to cost around it. So it's just really that type of thinking and just opening up how you do things and getting perspective from people. I appreciate a lot of insight that came from Sarah, having had run her own business from a ground up as well, having exited at $100 million, and so that's just really helped us rechannel how we think, how we position as a company, how we think about scale, how we think about teams, and so it's been really invaluable insight, insights how we fundraise. So a lot of support has come from that and I think, even as we've now grown and the board has now grown, I have a business coach that is supporting me and helping me with these capacities and just things that I need to sort of think of in the business in terms of strategy and how I actualize it, and so 100% mentors coaches I think I must have.

The trailblazer Experience: 37:01

That's amazing. So, while funding has been a crucial aspect, how do you personally define success for your tech startup? So, beyond the financial metrics, beyond the fact that you've raised series A, beyond the fact that at some point there'll be a massive exit, what's been success for you outside of financial metrics?

Evelyn Kaingu : 37:23

Yeah, I think for the longest time for us it was always going to be validation that an online company can work in Zambia, and I think we've been able to fulfill that because, as at last year, 99% of our customer base was completely an online transaction where we couldn't even have a one to one interaction with the customer. So, very excited about that, I think the key one for me would be, firstly, with the people that I work with, just support the female team here and sort of build that capacity in them, and I hope I'll be able to deliver that as a leader. That would be great. Secondly would then be around the customer base that we support. We hope to be the one solution that, or rather a holistic solution that we provide for our customer base, and perhaps a validation for us would be the lifetime value that we provide for the customer, and I think once we are able to really check those boxes and I think that would be very gratifying for us.

Evelyn Kaingu : 38:28

And secondly, thirdly, would be this big piece which is agriculture loans. I think there hasn't been a real product around how we really target them, how we really enable this sector, and so we've built a credit scoring model with the support of the World Bank and under the ICRA project. So we're very excited to really be launching like five value chains for this customer base and once we nail the first pilot of 100,000 farmers, I think that would be like a really key milestone for me and I think would have said we did something there and I would feel I supported to the body of the FinTech space.

The trailblazer Experience: 39:13

That's amazing. What are your core values and ethics? So, if you think about you as an individual?

Evelyn Kaingu : 39:21

Interesting question. I always don't like to, so I don't want to always brought up about the usual integrity and blah, blah, blah, but I think it's. I would probably say it would be around how I treat human beings to be able to support them, to be able to build them, to be able to perhaps make my contribution and mark in society, and I think I hope I do it in such a way that it has positive impact and support, and so I hope that really fits into a specific have proposition of what values and whole values are as an individual. And yeah, and I think I hope I am able to do that and I think that's what means so much to me than whatever would be. I want to be honorable and it's honorable person and full of integrity and blah, blah, blah and yeah, so I hope that's what I'm able to do.

The trailblazer Experience: 40:35

Do you know? I was listening to Gabor Mate and he talks about? We're all looking for inner peace and we all just want to be considered, you know, humans who gave back in some capacity and inner peace, and money is not going to do that for you. No it's, you know it's walking down the street and knowing that you were able to support and help the development of agriculture in Zambia, which is important, you know, for sustaining our culture and communities. It's those kind of things that feeling inside, no amount of money can buy Exactly.

Evelyn Kaingu : 41:06

Exactly, and I think, as you, as you sort of from the journey where we said, raising money from 500,000 to now, raising money in the millions of dollars, and it's just like money is the same, whether it's small, whether it's big, it just has. It has ways in which you choose to manage it and the scale is just different. So it's the same thing.

The trailblazer Experience: 41:31

Based on your journey with Lupia, what advice would you give? We're getting out to trailblazer takeaways. You know the tips, the nuggets what advice would you give to you know aspiring entrepreneurs, even just women, just looking to embark on potentially a similar career journey as yourself?

Evelyn Kaingu : 41:53

I think I would say stay long in the game, feel fast and quickly pick yourself up. It's a very lonely journey and it's really one that requires a lot of soul searching, convincing yourself that you are true to your charter, your path, what you're looking to achieve, but, of course, you do it in such a way that it is, you can validate it, because, I mean, we dream as entrepreneurs and I think when I discover the business model canvas, lupia was business idea number four. All three of them had failed and those are businesses that I thought were going to scale quickly and faster, but they just couldn't. And so it's really that learning cave and just quickly failing fast and just staying in the game long enough.

The trailblazer Experience: 42:47

Amazing. I also wanted to ask you, because you managed to meet VP Kamala Harris how did that cover battles like girl?

Evelyn Kaingu : 42:55

I was just saying when it happened. You know, we didn't even know until, like everybody else in the news. Then we had officials that visited us before. They told us a high profile individual was coming and would do all these walkthroughs and everything. But she is just very calm, very receptive, and I remember when she was walking towards us, right because Secret Service had told us there's no touching her, there's no hugging her, nothing, and she went coming and extending her hands. I think she forgot. I mean, she's human right.

The trailblazer Experience: 43:23

So, and you're, like now what do I do?

Evelyn Kaingu : 43:26

now I think she could.

Evelyn Kaingu : 43:27

She could read our body language because our hands were just like we are not moving, because we were warned about it, but we had such a great conversation and just the support that they've been able to give us.

Evelyn Kaingu : 43:36

So we're alumni of the US Embassy programs and so they also wanted to sort of just tell the story of the support of the funding that comes with the programs that they do and it just perfectly aligned with an SME farmer that we had supported and so it fit right perfectly with her agenda of supporting women entrepreneurs onto a green farm that we had also financed through this program, and so we took her to the farm and she met with the farmer and she had her whole press conference and briefing right there. So very exciting to have met her and just exchange ideas. She sent us lovely gifts afterwards, which is just really, really cool and, yeah, just that moment was very defining for us, just that validation that we're on the track, doing something meaningful. I suppose, and I think, like you had asked earlier, it's just really searching for that meaning and I think, yeah, I think that's what we try to do every day.

The trailblazer Experience: 44:35

And just for the audience, for context. So Vice President of America, kamala Harris, had paid a visit. She was doing a tour of Southern Africa and she'd visited Sambia, which is where we're both from, and just the honor, I think, of Evelyn, you know, meeting and talking about the projects that they're involved in. We will post any of the projects in the show notes because I think it's good to amplify the voice of what's going on in this country and the initiatives. But yeah, that is like a full circle moment, isn't it Exactly.

Evelyn Kaingu : 45:06

Almost close to meeting Oprah. Yeah, yeah, almost close to meeting Oprah. Oh Obama, though, so you're waiting.

The trailblazer Experience: 45:16

Exactly. Yeah, evelyn, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time to tell your story, tell your journey. You know it's all about women empowerment and telling the journey of your business and entrepreneurship. It's been a very long road, with highs and lows, but you've grown, you've evolved into the CEO of the business and I think someone out there who is looking at you know embarking on a similar journey will be inspired. So for those of you who don't know Lupia, please check it out online. They are a viable fintech business in Sambia doing great things. So thank you so much.

Evelyn Kaingu : 45:56

Thank you so much for having me. It's good to. I'm very different. I have your big sister interview you, so it's amazing, can we full circle, isn't it?

The trailblazer Experience: 46:06

Yeah, yeah.

Evelyn Kaingu : 46:07

So it's really great. Thank you so much for having me.

The trailblazer Experience: 46:12

So this has been the Trailblazers Experience podcast. Do you know where to find us? Please tell another woman about the podcast and remember to do the usual. It's follow, share like subscribe, but let's get the conversation going about the great women we have on the show. Thank you so much.