Building digital business communities

IOUze helps small businesses flourish and in doing so, allows businesses of all sizes to thrive and grow.

We offer small businesses access to the financial and supply chain capabilities that are currently only available to large organisations. We help small businesses operate in the mainstream economy with a level of maturity that transforms the way we think about small business development and growth.

IOUze uses blockchain technology to create business communities that operate at lower risk and lower friction.

For blue-chip companies, this delivers a level of business agility that is the real promise of digital transformation:

• Build digital business communities that connect you, your clients and your suppliers; and transaction with confidence with smaller suppliers and clients that have traditionally been challenging to work with
• Take advantage of low-risk and high-return supply chain investment opportunities

We are an exceptional technology company that can help you to evolve your business platform.

The importance of supporting SMEs in South Africa is well known. However, we also believe that instead of treating this as “catching up” against our economic and social backlog, we have the chance to create a business technology eco-system that leads the world.

Using decentralised business models

At our heart, we are spearheading the emergence of “decentralised business models” using disruptive technology and an exceptional engineering capability.

Decentralised social and business models are the next evolution of the internet ― so we have big aspirations ― we are not just looking to help our clients improve their internet business, but to be part of changing how the internet works, especially in the realm of business and finance.

To explain what this means: on the internet that we know, we freely exchange photos, documents, music, text, etc. This has been possible for more than 30 years, via email, instant messaging, etc. But we are not able to interact commercially in the same way — unless we use platforms like Amazon or Alibaba, but they are expensive and they keep changing the rules to make sure that they protect their interests ― selling on Amazon locks one into their supply chain, and doesn’t solve for general supply chain challenges ― having all commerce go through platforms like Amazon is actually a nightmare scenario ― not at all the promise that the internet should offer.

At IOUze, we are designing a different internet business platform ― that works in much the same way as the open internet ― cheap, simple and flexible ― where multiple service providers exchange business services. The service providers may be manufacturers, farmers, distributors, retailers, consumers, banks, investment funds, logistics providers, etc.

The experience is a world where businesses confidently exchange agreements such as quotes, purchase orders, invoices, delivery notes, etc. in the cloud, as simply as emails, but with data that has meaning and that are verified and shared in a secure and controlled way.

The net result is that everyone who is part of a transaction can see what is going on in real-time with complete trust in the data. There is a single view of the truth for each transaction.

It is like a distributed ERP database in the cloud, that is simple and cheap to access. But unlike traditional ERP systems, it allows supply chain owners to:

• reduce risk through higher integrity of data
• optimally share work with their business partners
• optimise financial returns on working capital

Bitcoin pointed the way to do this technically, allowing us to pay peer-to-peer. Blockchain technology more generally has struggled to show impact on mainstream business.

IOUze has implemented a model that has learnt from these technologies, but that is both disruptive and immediately usable.

Think of it like an internet for financial agreements.

Market size

Using a structural economic model, the IFC estimates [1] that the funding gap for SMEs in Africa is $300billion. At a conservative 1% margin, this translates into a revenue opportunity of $3billion. In addition we believe that monetising efficiency improvements offers at least a similar sized opportunity.

Privacy by design

IOUze is not exploiting the data of businesses on the network ― we have no access to it ― our goal is to give companies control of their data and the ability to share it in specific ways. We are the opposite of a Facebook model. We believe that “self-sovereign data” is the future of internet data businesses.

We make money by offering valuable services using our technology model, not by selling data.

Our team

We have a presence in Johannesburg, SA and Boston, USA. Our core leadership team is:

• Iain Fraser, an engineer with 20y experience in telecommunications, financial market technology several startups in SA, UK and USA;
• James Nicolson, an engineer with >20y experience in banking technology, technology strategy and business operating model design in Africa, HK and UK;
• Christiaan du Preez, 20y experience in capital markets technology, analytics and highly scalable systems in Africa and Denmark;
• Elizabeth Renieris, a legal specialist on data, privacy and technology in the USA and Europe;
• Peter Train, 20y experience in financial technology, specializing in payments, capital markets and architecture;

We have a strong network across technology, cryptography, law and development agencies in SA and USA that we draw on for project execution.

Potential opportunities to explore with blue-chip companies

Corporate pilots

We run digital pilots with supply chain owners and financial services firms that would like to create a more agile business community. These pilots are low-cost, time-boxed and focused on designing high impact solutions that solve real problems. Our goal is help clients learn through experimentation with no impact on current operational capacity. The outcome is a prototype of a high impact solution to connect your clients, suppliers and other partners.

ESD fund deployment

A key aspect of our business model is the ability to de-risk lending to SME’s. Our platform allows ESD funds to more efficiently deploy capital, while also giving their portfolio SMEs the tools they need to digitize their business. The outcome is a model to scale the ability to fund SMEs with greater transparency and lower risk.

Fintech eco-system

We have powerful technology assets and a strong technology team. We would be happy to work with other FinTechs that may need the type of decentralised platform that we are creating. The outcome is a richer community of FinTechs that your business can use for digital transformation

References

[1] “IFC Enterprise Finance Gap Database, International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC” http://www.smefinanceforum.org/data-sites/ifc-enterprise-finance-gap