Most small businesses start with humble origins, often in physical retail locations. But SMEs in developing countries can stagnate and fail through a lack of proper structure or access to capital. Often excluded from traditional financial institutions, there is a need to authenticate African SME sales histories to select individual institutions. Automating business records-keeping through solutions at the transaction level are more needed than ever.
Keturah Ovio is the Founder & CEO of Limestart, a Founder Institute Lagos company providing affordable turnkey commerce solutions to digitize transaction records at point-of-sale for Nigerian SMEs.
Transaction records consistency is critical for institutional recognition and access to capital for SMEs, so automated solutions are increasingly needed. According to the company’s website,
We believe everyone should be able to participate and thrive in our economy. No business deserve to be left out of our economy because the cost is too great or the technology, too complex.
Setup Fast & Fully Customizable
The best part is how easy it is to get setup and working with Limestart. They only ask you a few basic questions like type of business, number of stores (physical and online retail locations), and where the business is located – and the account is setup and ready to use!
The founders have a vision for helping to guide entrepreneurialism and independence through ecommerce access and adoption, saying on their website,
Our ultimate goal here at Limestart is to enrich people and businesses with powerful tools. Tools that reduce the time from ‘I have an idea’ to ‘my business is thriving’ and ‘I can pay myself a salary.’ We started with a simple inventory management system but we’re not stopping at that. You will be able to create and send invoices and receipts with ease, fulfill orders, and profile each customer you have.
A Vision For Business Digital Adoption
Limestart is open to platform feedback, collaboration, customization, and confident to help meet the needs of a wide variety of SMEs. The proprietary pocket-sized hardware will take payments offline and online, standout in Nigeria. The team has commenced pilot phases with users, setup overseas hardware manufacturing partnership, has sales partnerships ready for launch, as well as other key deals secured and in progress.
Whatever the size of the business, Limestart can help to start, grow, and manage all while on the go. Limestart is seeking to raise $650k to build additional capacity in technical, sales, and customer success teams.
If you’re interested to learn more, come see the Founders of Limestart live on November 16th in Lagos, Nigeria at Velocity Conference by Founder Institute Lagos.
* * *
Graduates of the Founder Institute are creating some of the world's fastest growing startups, having raised over $1.85BN in funding, and building products people love across over 200 cities worldwide.
See the most recent news from our Grads at FI.co/news, or learn more about their stories at FI.co/journey.
