Pngme is officially 1 year old! December marked our 1 year anniversary (as a registered c-corp!), and looking back over the past year has made us realize how much we’ve been able to accomplish in a short amount of time.
Highlights
- Closed our $500k Pre-Seed round in September 2019 led by Unshackled Ventures with Consensys’ Coven team and Unbounded Capital co-investing
- Signed contracts with our first two customers PENTAVIRATE and ReadyCash
- Received and approved our first agent e-float loans for issuance in February
- Hired 5 full-time employees
Customers & Partnerships
Our first customer is US-based PENTAVIRATE who will be white-labeling our app allowing their investors in the Middle East to invest in high-yield, institutional-grade, Sharia-compliant commercial real estate in the US. Through the mobile app and the web app, PENTAVIRATE’s investors will be able to invest into a SPV by depositing a small amount on a monthly basis ($100–500) and / or larger lump sum ($2K — 100K+). This SPV will invest in a fund, which will ultimately invest in commercial real estate, and typically generates 8–15% returns.
Our second customer is a 5 year channel partnership with Nigeria-based Parkway Projects’s ReadyCash, which is a mobile payment platform that provides individuals across Nigeria with a convenient way to bank directly from their mobile phone using ReadyCash’s agent network. In 2019, ReadyCash had 9,000 agents operating on its agent banking network and serves around 1.2 million banking customers. ReadyCash plans to grow to 100,000 agents over the next 5 years and serve over 10 million customers with banking services. Using Pngme’s digital Credit Scoring API and lending platform, this strategic partnership with Parkway Projects will focus on originating e-float loans to new and existing mobile money agents. These loans will be used to both increase existing agents’ capacity to serve customers as well as increase the number of agents and liquidity of the ReadyCash network.
Notable Achievements
SoGal Global Pitch Competition
SoGal is the largest global platform for the education and empowerment of diverse entrepreneurs and investors, whose mission is to close the diversity gap in entrepreneurship and venture capital. SoGal hosted 25 regional round pitch competitions across 5 continents in 2019, and on February 29, 2020, each of the regional finalists will be participating in the final round of the largest global pitch competition. Cate participated in the San Francisco pitch competition in November of 2019 and was selected as one of the three regional winners, and will be competing in the global competition in February. She will receive guaranteed face-time with top venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, curated educational programming, 1:1 mentorship, press exposure, and a chance to win a portion of $600k in investment capital.
CDL
Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is an objectives-based program for massively scalable, seed-stage science- and technology-based companies, and gives founders personalized mentorship from experienced entrepreneurs, investors, and we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve been accepted into their AI & Blockchain Stream.
The AI & Blockchain Stream at CDL-Toronto is a 10-month program that gives founders personalized mentorship from experienced entrepreneurs, investors, and a community of visionaries in tech. Every two months, companies in the program have a boardroom-style meeting with CDL Mentors to garner feedback and set objectives that hold the founders accountable for the next meeting. Mentors build a stronger relationship with founders by having continuous touch points and develop a deeper understanding of their businesses — allowing them to provide better strategic guidance.
CLA Summit
Brendan and Cate were nominated by the Canadian Lenders Association as one of 2019’s 25 Leaders in Lending. Feel free to read the release by the CLA here.
Key 2019/20 Hires
- Giovanni Valdenegro: Product, October 2018
- Ashley Wilson: Customer Success & Operations, July 2019
- Ankit Mishra: Growth, September 2019
- Brian Woods: Software Engineer, December 2019
- Dr Ratul Saha: Data Engineering, January 2020
The Pngme team is grateful for your support through 2019 and are excited to take the next steps on our journey in 2020.
Cheers!
The Pngme Team
