Inspiring Conversations with Wallace Kadima of tally.it Re-imagining Limited

Today we’d like to introduce you to Wallace Kadima.

Hi Wallace, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Before tally.it, I was a freelance financial consultant, it wasn’t easy but it paid the bills I also owned a phone distributorship business in Nairobi. It’s through my business and doing part time consultancy that I was introduced to SME problems in Kenya. Traders lacked business management platforms that catered for their needs and the available ones were extremely expensive and complicated to use.

Tally.it the idea was still bit and pieces until 2015 September when I enrolled at Strathmore University to do Chattered Financial Analyst (Cfa). After a class session, our Economics lecturer challenged us into creating a concept that would aid SMEs streamline their businesses in a manner that will also help them unlock financial capital from financial institutions. tIs from the Economics class that we started developing the product and ever since we have been creating different modules to achieve growth of tally.it.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Growing tally.it has been a thousand things but easy and smooth is not among the list. Along the journey, we encountered thoughts of quitting countless times, but the idea of changing people’s lives and being part of something bigger than us kept us going.

Creating a fintech in Africa and Kenya to be specific is not easy, the support system and the community environment that support young founders is non-existent unlike places like Sanfransico, Silicon Valley and Stockholm.

Access to Capital was one of our major challenges considering that creating a product to be market fit takes a minimum of 2 years, we had to find various avenues to sustain our operations for 3 years.

The issue was compounded further by Financial institutions in Kenya who focus on asset-based type of lending; so having an idea that was not Cashflow generating locked us out from accessing Loan Capital. Raising Capital from Venture Firms was also another hurdle for us. Most VCs are skeptical on investing in Africa and the few ones that do have stringent criteria that locked us from accessing these funds.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
tally.it aims to simplify complex financial concepts like Cash flow analysis into easily accessible features that can be understood by any trader with an elementary level of education. Whereas other Financial platforms are dependent on having a computer and an accountant to operate them. With tally.it the only tool for operation is a trader’s mobile phone.

What sets us apart is, simplifying complex Accounting concepts into easy and cheap modules that SMEs can use.

Our most proud achievements to date is being able to see our product being used and clients calling us and taking an interest in knowing how various features in the App work. We helped traders understand their business over and above just knowing how to manage sales and inventory.

We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
I have learned a couple of lessons Key of them being, we really are not in control of how the future will be, so many are times we talk about a good plan, a solid strategy can weather you through any storm. Covid made plans and strategies absolute. At times it’s good to focus on the now and just be able to do all that you can do to the best of your ability and allow the future and tomorrow to handle the rest.

Covid also made me realize that it’s important to think about the very worst of scenarios. This can help one be better prepared to handle the unknown situations, you may not have a solution at the time but you can buy yourself enough time to figure out the solution.

Pricing:

• Yearly Subscription on the platform is $64

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: http://tallyit.co.ke