The serial entrepreneur has already helped create five startups in Africa. His latest venture embodies his desire to build a new credit and trade infrastructure in Africa and emerging markets.

Kageni Wilson (photo) is a Kenyan entrepreneur and the co-founder/CEO of fintech startup  Finplus Group. With the latter, he aims to help close the “massive $5-trillion credit deficit faced by SMEs in developing countries each year."

To achieve its goal, the startup developed Finplus, a digital finance and e-commerce software that provides three main services. First, it enables banks and micro-lenders to lend on a large scale. It also helps consumer goods companies digitize end-to-end sales by effectively transforming their supply chain into a demand chain. Finally, it unlocks access to an instant credit line for tens of millions of SMEs and individuals in emerging markets. It has already processed more than US$1 billion in transaction value in the Kenyan, Ugandan, Tanzanian, eSwatini, and South African markets. It has also enabled access to credit for more than 3 million SMEs and individuals.

"Today, our software helps an individual or small business access credit or transact with financial institutions and suppliers every 10 seconds. We have come a long way since processing our first transaction in April 2017 and it’s all thanks to our customers trusting us to manage their relationship with millions of end customers and over a billion dollars of value. It’s an enormous responsibility and one that gives us pride as an African company building in Africa for Africans," Wilson said in November 2022.

Since 2016, the latter is a mentor in KCB Bank Group's KCB 2jiajiri program. He is also an iHub Nairobi Outreach Ambassador and a member of the non-profit crowdfunding platform 1%Club’s team.

The serial entrepreneur also co-founded the education platform Usomi, in 2012. About one year earlier, he had co-founded cloud computing service Ionacloud after co-creating digital media production company Planetary Pictures in 2011.

From 2014 to 2017, he was the founding partner of AllenHark Group, "a collective of financial technology companies building plug and play software solutions for Financial Services delivery in East Africa."

Melchior Koba