Pezesha, a Kenyan finance fintech has managed has received a $500,ooo grant from the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC).
Founded in 2017 by Hilda Moraa, Pezesha has built a scalable digital lending infrastructure that allows both traditional and non-traditional finance institutions to offer working capital to MSMEs. She started Pezesha after successfully exiting Weza Tele in 2015.
Pezesha intends to use the grant to build a proprietary credit scoring model that will improve their underwriting capabilities for small and medium sized enterprise clients.
The fintech works with partner companies such as MarketForce, which integrate its credit scoring APIs in their platforms to enable their customers get real time loan offers.
The company indicated that it has been working with partner companies that have enabled it to extend loans to over 100,000 businesses to date. The fintech is able to extend loans of up to $10,000 at single digit interest rates, and a repayment period of one year.
Pezesha plans to create a $100 million financing opportunity each year for businesses by tapping local and international banking institutions, high net-worth individuals and decentralized finance.