Scaling hope: How ShopOkoa is redefining financial inclusion

For over a decade, our international startup programme, Leaders in Innovation Fellowships (LIF), has worked with talented entrepreneurs to turn bold ideas into scalable solutions. Through expert training, world-class mentorship, and access to our global networks, we’ve helped 1,550+ entrepreneurs across the world to drive lasting change.

One such entrepreneur is Kelvin Mulama, winner of the LIF Innovator of the Year award for 2025. Kelvin’s work is redefining financial inclusion in sub-Saharan Africa, with his community-led lending platform ‘ShopOkoa’ bringing hope to hundreds of thousands of users.

I saw people who never saved a shilling start saving, people without bank accounts buy phones just to use our product. I watched ShopOkoa slowly become a household name and realised that a simple idea was becoming something great.

What is ShopOkoa, and what problem is it solving?

ShopOkoa is a Kenyan-built fintech platform that has digitised informal shopkeeper credit to make everyday essentials affordable for low-income families. Across Kenya, millions of people living on less than two dollars a day rely on small local shops for food and household goods, but often buy in tiny daily portions that ultimately cost more per unit. ShopOkoa transforms these shopkeepers into last-mile fulfilment centres and community micro-banks, allowing families to buy goods in bulk and repay through small, flexible, interest-free instalments. Powered by artificial intelligence, it personalises credit limits, and uses community savings groups (known as ‘chamas’) to guarantee repayments. As it scales, ShopOkoa is evolving into Africa’s first AI-powered, tokenised banking system that bridges the $330 billion small and medium enterprise (SME) financing gap, and channels global capital into real economic activity across the continent.

Looking back to before you joined LIF, what were the biggest hurdles that you encountered in trying to commercialise and scale ShopOkoa?  

The biggest hurdles we faced were around product validation, cash flow, and scaling. Start up support from LIF Global was a game changer. It was my first experience as an entrepreneur, and the programme guided me through designing our prototype and building the minimum viable product that later generated our first revenues. Through top-tier mentorship, I learned how to validate business assumptions, identify what customers were truly willing to pay for, and understand the talent gaps within my team. This clarity helped me to make strategic hires, and refine our model. The programme also opened funding opportunities, enabling me to raise $12,000 and later $36,000 in seed support from partners who learned of my participation. As a fintech extending credit, cash flow was our biggest challenge, but my mentors from the next stage of the LIF programme, Advance, helped us to implement daily repayments, which improved liquidity and supported our growth from 50,000 to 225,000 daily customers.

What has been the most impactful piece of feedback or mentorship that you have received on your journey? How have you incorporated this into your business?

During LIF, my mentor advised me not to focus on building fast, but on validating assumptions first. He guided me through customer segmentation, validation tools, and how to ask the right questions to understand what customers were truly willing to pay for. This mentorship led to our first minimum viable product, which generated our initial revenues. Later, during Advance, my mentors noticed that our 30-day repayment schedule was straining cash flow. They helped us to redesign it into daily repayments, which transformed our liquidity, and enabled us to scale from 50,000 to 225,000 daily customers without stretching our capacity.

One of ShopOkoa’s unique selling points is its community-led model of finance. How has your understanding of product-market fit, and creating a product with a clear end-user in mind, developed over time?

For me, product-market fit means offering a solution that customers are willing to pay for without needing to be convinced. In ShopOkoa, we achieved it when we realised that by cutting the cost of customers’ daily supplies through bulk purchasing, our product became indispensable. Over time, we identified another noticeable gap in the market: SMEs in our ecosystem lacked access to affordable credit. Since our communities were already digitised and had built capital through savings, we began using those pooled savings not only as a guarantee for credit, but also as a means of lending to small businesses, producing profits to be shared with community members.

Access to investors and strategic partners is crucial to long-term success. Through LIF Global, Advance , and your continued engagement in the LIF Community, what new opportunities have emerged, and how are you capitalising on them?

LIF grounded me in building a product that is both sustainable and scalable. It gave me the structure to develop ShopOkoa from a prototype, into a working solution that could generate consistent revenue. Advance 2024 then equipped me with the capacity to scale from 50,000 to 225,000 active daily users, and introduced me to valuable industry partnerships in the United Kingdom. Through these networks, I received recommendations and referrals to venture capital firms across Africa, paving the way for our ongoing one million dollar pre-seed raise. Beyond funding, these connections opened doors to rare opportunities such as the Visa Accelerator Program 2025, the BimaLab Accelerator, and the Alliance for Financial Inclusion Showcase, where ShopOkoa was ranked third globally. I am currently serving as the Vice President of the Kenyan LIF Community Alumni Country Chapter, ensuring that the spirit of LIF goes on to inspire other entrepreneurs who started from scratch, just like me. The mentorship, exposure, and partnerships gained through the LIF community have truly positioned ShopOkoa for long-term growth and investor confidence.

I have not only built technology; I have built hope. Families who once skipped meals now buy food in bulk and repay with dignity.

LIF grounded me in building a product that is both sustainable and scalable. It gave me the structure to develop ShopOkoa from a prototype, into a working solution that could generate consistent revenue.

What does it mean to you to be named LIF Innovator of the Year 2025, and how do you feel this award will support ShopOkoa’s next stage of growth?

Being named LIF Innovator of the Year 2025 is deeply personal to me. It honours a journey that began in a small shop with a pen, a notebook, and a dream. I have not only built technology; I have built hope. Families who once skipped meals now buy food in bulk and repay with dignity. This award represents a movement focused on empowering poor communities financially and making them an unstoppable force of prosperity. It reminds me that innovation means little if it does not reach the last person in line. It strengthens my resolve to keep building, mentoring, and inspiring others who started with nothing but belief.