Meet Entrepreneur, Babatunde Akin-Moses Founder Of Sycamore, The Company Offers Loans, Transfers, Bill Payments And Peer To Peer Lending Services

Young innovative entrepreneur
Babatunde Akin-Moses is the CEO of Sycamore, a company that offers loans, transfers, bill payments and peer to peer lending services. He speaks to Elorasblog in this interview.

Please tell us a little bit about your background?

My name is Babatunde Akin-Moses and I’m
currently the CEO of Sycamore. Prior to Sycamore, I have worked in Pezesha (a fintech in Nairobi), and in consulting firms, PwC and KPMG.

I was born and raised in Nigeria, even though I have lived in a lot of countries including Kenya and Spain.
I studied economics at Bowen University, and I have an MBA from Lagos Business school. I am also a chartered accountant.
I love writing observational pieces, and breaking down economic problems and terms to the smallest terms possible. For fun, I play table tennis, even though I can hardly find the time to that these days.

What motivated you to start up Sycamore.ng, and how did you come up with this business idea?

I would say it was just time. All three of us (Onyinye Okonji, Mayowa Adeosun, and I) had reached a point in our lives where we knew we were looking for something new when we met at Lagos Business School (LBS). We were reviewing a case study collectively, and while reviewing
some data for reference purposes, we found out that of all the credit available to the private sector in Nigeria, only 1% of the total was available to SMEs. When you consider the fact that there are over 40 million SMEs in Nigeria, you can see that this is a really big gap.

This incident, along with some bad experience we have had while attempting some side businesses of our own, motivated us to start Sycamore.

Why did you choose the name Sycamore.ng?

It’s actually an obvious story when you hear it. So in the bible there was a man named
Zaccheus who wanted to see Jesus but couldn’t because the crowd created a large gap between them both. So what did he do? He saw a Sycamore tree and climbed it , and he ended up having dinner with Jesus that day. This story resonated with us because we want to be that tree, bridging the gap between people and the access to credit for financial freedom.

Photos of Sycamore staffs

Did you attend any form of training before starting up

Sycamore.ng?
Not particularly but we were all carrying out our MBA program at LBS when we decided to start and that counts for something. Also, we all had management experience working with established businesses, which taught us how to manage people and resources.

Many young youths like you have business ideas but raising capital is the challenge, how were you able to raise capital for your business?

I always advocate for starting in paid employment if you can. Three of us had saved money from our prior careers and so were able to grow from there. In addition, we had contacts from our former places of employment and schoolmates to invest in the dream.

Another point to add is that our business model is a platform model. We had to find lenders who would pay to borrowers, so most of the operations were not carried out with our capital per se.

In the final analysis, it’s much easier to raise money from savings, or pooling funds together from family and friends for a start. The business can get other forms of financing as it grows.

Sycamore.ng offers loans, transfers, bill payments and peer to peer lending services, how can your clients build their trust in your services?

We operate based on integrity, which is one of our core values. Because we hold our customers in high esteem, we have been very particular about onboarding them the right way on both ends (that is both lenders and borrowers) so that their information is safe with us. We also operate with total professionalism, ensuring that we do not resort to any unethical means of loan
collections or customer data sharing.

Since we are regulated, we also operate with very high standards of transparency, and data protection policies. Customers have come to trust us over time as we communicate with them regularly and they see we have nothing to hide.

How do you make profits from these services?

We offer loans to customers to be paid back with interest. When the loan is collected, we repay the lender their loan and split the interest income with the lender.

Can you share with me the setbacks and challenges you’ve encountered in this
business?

There was a period where the Japa wave struck us and we had a lot of talent traveling outside the country for school and other purposes. We however learned to deal with this by increasing our training and development scope for our employees, so that we could seamlessly fill in for
those that wished to transition out of the company.

Another major challenge was the Covid-19 era, when economic activities were shot down. During that period, we made a conscious effort to focus mainly on businesses and people that were creating value in the health and services sectors which were the sectors that were still functioning in that time. We found that we thrived during that period, and also created a lot of impact.

Where do you see Sycamore.ng in 5 years?

We see ourselves having conquered the African lending market with our products, looking to build across the globe. We particularly see Loan Friends, our product that enables friends and family members to
borrow money from each other with the surety of being paid back, becoming a household product for people across Africa.

Ultimately we see ourselves as a major driver for financial inclusion in the African space.

Creating a world where access to credit is as easy as buying a lollipop.

Email: elora.akpotosevbe@yahoo.com