Meet GES Delegate: Faith Chege
Twitter Handle: @ Kuifai
Country of Origin: Kenya
Organization Name: Dalah Ventures
Website: www.dalahventures.com
Our Organization: Dalah is a business development and pre-investment support social enterprise in Nairobi, Kenya. Our two-tier mandate is to address the financing challenges most social enterprises face that hinder them from reaching their full potential, while providing impact investors with a pipeline of bankable ventures that generate both financial and social returns.
Using a practical approach, we equip entrepreneurs with business tools such as the business canvas model, pitch deck, finance model, design thinking and bootstrapping to design sustainable and bankable businesses. We then ensure that they have legal, financial and marketing frameworks to be competitive and, thereafter, help them shop for investments to scale.
What inspired us to start this organization? As a Chief Finance Officer of a multinational, I understand the power timely access to financing holds in making or breaking a great idea. What I found contradicting was that entrepreneurs believed that there was no capital to access while investors complained that they lacked bankable ventures to invest in. There was clearly a gap between the two entities. After meeting Chris Sacca and the role he has played in Uber and Instagram, I was inspired to start Dalah Ventures to equip disruptive startups to scale, create jobs, provide solutions and disrupt the African markets.
What is the next big step we hope to help the organization reach? We are working on a project targeting 250 social entrepreneurs over a 1-year period in Kenya. Using a practical approach, we will take the entrepreneurs through 6-week trainings, addressing their business gaps and equipping them with scalable business models, financial projections and marketing strategies. Thereafter, we will offer subsidized legal, finance and marketing services to help them register their businesses, set up and manage financial systems, and build websites and social media presence by hiring 50 fresh graduates to offer customized support. I plan to raise $50,000 to implement this project.
What has been your biggest obstacle as an entrepreneur? I have been lucky to get support from my mentor who has been an entrepreneur for a longer time. His insights on the do’s and don’ts has saved me time and money. Also being accelerated at Wecreate’s Startup Cup has exposed me to the right business tools to lay a great business foundation.
Raising funds for an early stage is a challenge in Africa, but it’s encouraging to see so many impact investors coming to GES. I’m a flight away from my breakthrough, and excited about the possibilities of making it easier for other entrepreneurs!
What advice would you give other emerging entrepreneurs? While designing a solution, focus on your customers. Design thinking is the heart of scalable and sustainable solutions. It takes time and money to test business models and get customer validation, a lot of hard work to pilot until your solution is a match for your customer’s needs. But that increases adaptability and impact. Our society issues need solutions that take a bottom up approach for every dollar we apply to generate return on investment.
