MOBU – SMART Investment Bank

 It is no secret that Africa lacks access to capital and actually receives less than 1% of global deal flow from Venture Capital funds although it consists of 30% resources and 60% agri land.  Investment banking is a growing trend now and several crowdfunding sites have come to life.  Although they raise small amounts, but it is quite a good supportin strengthening the overall economic conditions.  

The problems with crowdfunding in Africa:
•    Lack of regulation and accountability – Africa, unfortunately is known for corruption and nepotism in a global context.  When considering crowdfunding in Africa, it remains expensive and difficult taking legal action cross border.
•    Longer payment processing time - Cross-border payments can easily take 3-5 working days between banks, making it an administrative nightmare even when escrow accounts are used. If there is a typo error in the payment process, it may not be cleared by central banks and take even longer.
•    Access of fake investors - There are too many scenarios where middle men and marketers get involved with no intention of actually writing a cheque to the entrepreneurs.
•    Not everyone has money - People raising money don`t necessarily have money to pay someone to raise money.

MOBU has tried and tested all the models around the world.  The most common model probably is paying a broker dealer or fundraising partner 30-50k USD upfront to get introduced to 20 odd screened investors with no guarantee of success. MOBU has spent millions of rands to acquire a powerful database of over 20,000 family offices, Venture Capital Funds, Accredited Investors, BD partnerships on performance fee only, etc. to ensure good opportunities are matched with the right investors.  MOBU Invest doesn`t charge any upfront fees but is very selective to which projects they onboard as investment banking is reputational banking.  MOBU takes a success fee which can be waived if the company integrates MOBU payment solution into their business.  Although the initial idea for MOBU was to build a blockchain-based crowdfunding platform, but due to reasons listed above, we believed that raising the funds in private within our network would be more efficient.  The online portal is our gateway to filter opportunities.

It is expected that Africa may be the next China or India in terms of growth, but only time will tell.  One thing is for certain that there are endless opportunities in Africa.