A South African Fintech, building the AI-enabled funding ladder for African SMEs - focusing on Ag and Food industries.
Back in 2022, Zaheer 🇿🇦 (ex-banker & strat. consultant), Faz 🇿🇦 (ex-entrepreneur turned farmer after successfully exiting his first Climate Tech startup) and Jérôme 🇧🇪 (ex-strat. consultant) connected around a shared ambition: to unlock African SMEs growth. The trio identified access to capital as a major hurdle for these businesses; thus, Pumpkn was born. Their mission? To unlock over $1 billion in financing for 100k+ SMEs across Africa by 2030 - focusing specifically on agriculture and food. Soon after, they expanded their team with Ben 🇿🇼, Olu 🇳🇬, Mario 🇿🇦, and Yanga 🇿🇦 … and our interns Audrey 🇿🇦🇿🇼 and Azra 🇿🇦.
Having signed up over 170 SMEs and built a funding pipeline exceeding R50 million, we are on the verge of closing our $1 million pre-seed round from International and South Africa-based investors. Successful founders, including SweepSouth's Aisha & Allen and Yoco's Lungisa, joined the adventure as Angels and Advisors.
We are now at a pivotal point in our journey and aim to build on this strong initial traction. Join the Pumpkin adventure and help construct the AI-enabled funding ladder for African entrepreneurs!
On the African continent, there is a $500 billion annual funding gap that hampers the growth of SMEs. Despite having significant growth potential, these businesses struggle to secure funding that would allow them to grow and mitigate against the risks posed by climate change. This situation is even more pronounced for those involved in agriculture and food production, which account for the most jobs and make a substantial economic contribution on the continent.
Why? Put simply, lending to Agri & Food SMEs isn’t profitable for traditional banks and debt providers. On top of this, these SMEs lack demonstrable track records and credit risk profiles so can’t meet the lender’s requirements.
Pumpkn is building the tech to get SMEs funded ensuring their growth, sustainability, and resilience. Our AI-enabled funding ladder develops rich credit risk data which unlocks repeated cycles of capital for SMEs to grow and to handle climate shocks.
Demand for our financial solutions has exceeded our expectations and outpaced our ability to build. So we’re on the hunt for incredible talent to join us as we solve one of the critical growth problems on the continent.