How advancly grew from a startup to a $2.8 million income generating business within 2 years

OVERVIEW OF ADVANCLY

Advancly is a credit-tech company currently  making waves in the finance world, they do this by providing access to credit for aggregators in Africa and emerging markets. With a focus on  business empowerment with debt capital and embedded finance, Advancly aims to enable their ecosystems to access and efficiently utilise credit to grow.

Advancly has been in operation for two years, and during that time, they have cultivated meaningful and impactful relationships with their "Progress Partners" enabling them to generate millions in dollars(about $2.8 million). These partnerships are responsible lenders who operate with a consumer-centred mindset, ensuring that their borrowers have access to the capital they need to grow their businesses.

At the helm of Advancly is Lotanna Julian, who believes that credit can unlock the potential of African entrepreneurs, fuel innovation and drive economic growth. Julian is passionate about closing the lending gap in Africa and emerging markets and is committed to injecting $500 million in debt into creditworthy MSMEs by 2026.

In an interview, Lotanna discusses Advancly’s unique approach to providing credit, key challenges the organisation has faced and how they have overcome these challenges.

What Lotanna has to say: 

“Even though Advancly is primarily a B2B lender, we adopt what we like to call a B2B4C model: Business To Business For Communities/Customers. This means that while we exist to serve businesses, our core concern is the people running these businesses as well as the people that these businesses serve. We want to break down the barriers currently inhibiting seamless access to credit-for-scale, so we've done away with some more traditional steps you'd expect for a business like ours.”

”We also innovate around credit risk by assessing the financial health of the business. We look at track records, valid contracts, transaction history and a host of other things that can validate that we can trust a business with credit. In addition, when navigating a new business relationship, we start with what we call a 'pilot', where we give these businesses an amount as a test. We use this to evaluate how healthy the relationship will be and if we can scale with them.”

The approach adopted by Advancly is a much different one from traditional lending institutions, which direct their focus primarily on providing loans to individuals or large corporations. Instead, Advancly partners with aggregators who extend financial value to consumers. These aggregators have direct access to their customer base, which makes them uniquely positioned to identify and assess credit risk or risks as the case may be.

CHALLENGES FACED BY ADVANCLY

Lotanna mentioned that the challenges Advancly has faced include : 

•A general lack of education about debt and how to use debt to grow because most people inherently see debt as a bad thing and usually not as an instrument for growth.

•lack of adequate data to credit score people/businesses seeing as the credit system in Africa and emerging markets is not as developed as that of the western world

When asked about Leveraging Technology and innovation to achieve its long-term goals and remain competitive in the rapidly evolving finance industry, Lotanna answered saying:

“One thing we pride ourselves on at Advancly is that we're constantly thinking about the future and how we can leverage emerging technology to solve for it. We're currently looking at how we leverage artificial intelligence to aid credit scoring and how AI can help us understand how people make decisions and what needs people mostly look to credit to solve.

We live in a world where digital assets are fast becoming as relevant as physical assets, so we're innovating around enabling people to use their digital assets as leverage to access capital in the physical world. We're also looking to utilise technology to democratise access to credit, thus enabling businesses and entrepreneurs to raise debt capital to power their businesses in new and innovative ways.”

Now generating an income of about $2.8 million, It is safe to say that the future looks bright for Advancly, and they are well on their way to achieving their goal of injecting $500 million in debt into creditworthy MSMEs by 2026. With their innovative approach and commitment to responsible lending, Advancly is leading the charge in closing the lending gap in Africa and emerging markets