NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

It’s web-based nature facilitates access via a wide range of devices, including smartphones and tablets.

Earlier this year, the startup emerged as a winner in this year’s Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Grand Challenges Explorations Round 14” and received $100,000 for “enabling universal acceptance of mobile money”.

Just months before that in 2014, MYAccounts had been one of seven African startups to win the “Microsoft Corporation Innovation Award Grant Round 2” which includes financial endowment, access to Microsoft platforms, one-on-one mentorship and networking support to help winners connect with relevant partners and find commercialization opportunities for their solutions.

But what does this actually entail; how did the idea come alive, why is it being received with such praise and what does the future hold? PC Tech spoke to one of the masterminds behindMYAccounts, CEO Francis Otim, to get some answers.

“Our goal was to use our skills as chartered accountants to help local businesses grow.”

Having co-run a business advisory firm where he and a friend supported small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in accounting, tax, controls and general consulting, Otim says he observed a general unhealthy lack of qualified accounting professionals because they were either working for the government, big multinational companies, or NGOs. He had observed that “for bank loan applications, for example, most SMEs pay bank loan officers to prepare a set of accounts to help them secure the funds they want.”