Eric Kamau, MD, from True African Limited mentioned that his has been around for 18 years, providing mobile banking platforms and sending money out, offering a service similar to what WorldRemit is doing. He said meeting people in the FinTech industry who have been able to raise money was amazing, especially hearing about their positive and negative experiences to raising money.

Eric disclosed that his company True African Ltd has partnered with MasterCard, rolling out 45000 merchants in Uganda using mobile technology. They have been doing mobile banking with Barclays bank, Standard Chartered Bank, DTB, KCB, covering 15 of the 25 financial Tier One banks in Uganda for the last 18 years. They also partnered with MTN for mobile money, basically a full circle of Fintech financial service provider.

Eric expressed his desire to raise money from interested investors. Raising finance and attracting private equity is still a challenge in Uganda. Typically, seeding money is raised through family and friends or savings as pre-seed financing. When someone wants to raise over half a million dollars, the challenge is seeing companies come to compete in the Ugandan market with a lot of money from the Silicon Valley, who are able to go further than the local players because they have enough funding to allow them to do whatever they want.

Mr Kamau said he came to the Convention to scout for business people to invest in his company which could become another World Remit.

About True African:

True African is a Value-Added Services Provider, a Communications and Information Technology company in Uganda and Kenya. As an information services provider (VASP), True African maintains a range of information categories that it provides to the mass market, mainly through partnerships with mobile telecommunications companies. In Uganda, the most popular information service is SMS Info, available on 7197 for MTN, Warid, UTL and Airtel Uganda. In Kenya, SMS info is available on 2197 on Safaricom and Airtel Kenya.

Website: http://www.trueafrican.com

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