iKhokha Co-Founder Matt Putman Reveals How Many SMEs The Start-Up Aims To Reach
iKhokha Co-Founder Matt Putman Reveals How Many SMEs The Start-Up Aims To Reach. In an interview with eNCA, South African entrepreneur and co-founder of iKhokha Matt Putman revealed how many SMEs the startup aims to reach in the next coming years. The company has set this goal in order to provide a significant change in how small businesses handle cashless payments.
He said, “We have conservative expectations but I think the bigger picture here is that there is very good card penetration in South Africa, right down to the grassroots level people have debit cards but in the informal space especially in townships, there is very low card acceptance so people end up drawing cash and getting robbed, merchants end up having to through a lot of additional security issues, for us the aim is to get to 100 000 SMEs over the course of the next few years.”
Putman has had the privilege of working with and leading an ambitious team of over 100 people who are committed to disrupting the financial services space in South Africa. Over the past years, iKhokha has become one of the fastest growing companies within the SME space locally and it is constantly striving to service its fellow entrepreneurs with the platform and tools they need to take their businesses to new heights.
To achieve its goal the company has so far built the first South African developed Mobile Card Machine to receive full international accreditation from Card Schemes. It launched the first retail distribution channel for SME’s to purchase Card Machines in-store in partnership with Game. The company also launched the iKhokha Cash Advance product in partnership with Retail Capital and have advanced capital to over 4000 underserved SME’s. To achieve its goal Putman understands that the startup has to cater to the needs that startups have, this is why it important for it to remain very vigilant to the problems that startups face so that they can provide the best possible solution, this way more SMEs will prefer to use the startup’s products.
