NewTech Friday : KAYKO – Bookkeeping app for SMEs

Based in Rwanda, KAYKO offers an app that allows small businesses to send invoices and receipts, collect customer debts, manage their stock, and measure their profit and loss. We talk about the company and the app with Crepin Kayisire, is Founder and CEO of KAYKO.

What led to the creation of KAYKO?

When my brother and I were teenagers, our mom left her government job to start a small catering business. We would help her prepare meals and clean dishes during the holidays to earn some allowance. In the beginning, it was thrilling to have a family business. 

As time went by, we realized some of the challenges our Mother faced running her small business. Being very involved in the business's day-to-day operations as she was, our mother didn't have time to properly record cash and credit sales correctly and often mixed up business and personal expenses. Banks constantly rejected her whenever she needed financial support because she did not have professional bookkeeping records.

Without access to working capital, the catering businesses struggled for a long time and eventually shut down two years later. It was a tough time for our family because our livelihoods depended on the company.

A few years later, while attending university, my brother and I teamed up for our final year project to ideate how we would have solved the problem for our mother back then. We discovered that our Mother was not alone in having this problem during our research.

There are, of course, tens of thousands of small enterprises that go out of business every year because of the informal manner by which they conduct their bookkeeping. Most SMEs rely on traditional bookkeeping methods — maintaining ledgers on paper — which is futile when looking for financial support.