Many Nigerians today live below the poverty line not necessarily because they have low incomes or poor salaries, but perhaps they lack a savings and investment culture.
The Harmonized Nigeria Living Standard Survey reports that Nigeria spends about N25 billion daily on food items. There is a high propensity to consume but a low propensity to save. This is quite alarming for a developing nation.
High consumption would mean low savings, low investment, and low capital formation. If this persists, the Nigeria populace will be engulfed in a poverty trap. It is, therefore, necessary to build among Nigerians ‘ savings and investment culture.
Also, many startups/businesses have challenges with raising funds to bring their ideas to reality. Accessing credit facilities for most of them without collateral proves difficult.
Solving the two problems, investa.ng developed a seamless solution to instil the savings and investment culture in Nigerians thereby creating a funding pool for verified and viable startups using the cooperative model.
The platform which was launched in early 2020 with over 5, 000 active customers, has redefined how savings and investment can be made simple and accessible to everyone.
Investa.ng uses the cooperative module to fund startups via members/users savings and investments funds.
Users would have the chance to save one-time or periodically, the value which can be both stored in Naira and Dollars and can also invest in verified members startups. Presently, there are two verified startups available, agriculture and fintech.
The fintech startup for instance is building a new model payment solution for the Nigerian digital space which has the capacity to disrupt the existing ones.
Investa.ng has the highest interest rate when it comes to a savings platform in Nigeria, while others offers between 8-15%, investa.ng offers its users 20% interest in 12 months and 45% interest in 24months. This also applies to the dollar savings where you save your funds against devaluation.
The good part of this feature is that you get paid a fraction of your savings weekly.
On the vision of the startup, the Founder Oluwatosin Gbenga has this to say: “We know how difficult it is for starts up to raise funds to fund their ideas; we are focused on helping businesses (startup) raise funds to help bring their ideas to life using the cooperative model. We encourage our users to invest in members verified startups and get as high as 25% on their investments.”
