Founder Mythos
Hilda Moraa built the layer everyone else lends through.
In the Global South, the founder who builds the rail outlasts the founder who builds the app.
When a kiosk can borrow against its sales ledger, the whole street compounds.
Nairobi, 2016. Hilda Moraa had already built and exited WezaTele, and chose the harder problem next: Africa's small businesses were the economy, yet invisible to its credit system. She founded Pezesha as infrastructure, not a lender - the rails banks and capital providers lend through, rather than another balance sheet.
The founding decision that mattered: build the layer everyone else lends through.
More than 500,000 loans have moved across those rails in Kenya and Uganda, four in ten to women borrowing formally for the first time. The Global South's credit system is being built as shared infrastructure, by the founders who know the borrower.
Source: Pezesha; The Fintech Times; Kenya Capital Markets Authority.