. MonieWorx leads the securities-based regulation crowdfunding market in Nigeria

MonieWorx, the SEC regulated crowdfunding marketplace operated by Obelix 4.1.1 Alternative Finance Ltd, a SEC-licenced Operator of regulated markets for investors and issuers of crowd securities, has closed its Encore Campaign, raising an impressive ₦260 million in just seven days. This is a milestone achievement for MonieWorx, its investing and fundraising partners as well as the alternate finance marketplace.

In its pioneer campaign six months ago dubbed “100-in-10”, MonieWorx successfully raised ₦100M for three SMEs in ten days. This created a groundswell that occasioned an encore campaign during with

₦260M was raised for seven SMEs in ten days.

Three of the SMEs that listed debt securities on MonieWorx® during this encore campaign, [i.e. Megavision Lighting Ltd, Online Health Company Ltd and Worthrust Resource Ltd] achieved 100% subscription within six days of listing, while the other four SMEs [i.e. Beehive School Ltd, Jade & Mary Paper Mills Ltd (trading as Cobhams Manufacturing), Sentient XT Creative Services Ltd and 8ight Unique Global Telecoms Ltd] achieved 100% subscription a day after; bringing the encore campaign to closure in seven days after successfully achieving 100% subscription.

This success highlights the commitment of the MonieWorx to creating a viable alternative marketplace for investors seeking safe and viable investment opportunities and SME businesses seeking working and growth capital.

The campaign saw the debut of GCN Crowd Notes, [priced at 19%] – a fixed income product with a cover

– that was structured in response to the feedback from the MonieWorx community of investors. Members of this community have lost as much as ₦100 million to ponzi schemes. The design of the GCN Crowd Note is intended to provide principal protection thus assuaging the concern and inoculating against past trauma.

MAX Crowd Notes – the vanilla offering on MonieWorx -was designed for investors who want to optimise their returns and was priced at 21% per annum.

In keeping with one of its unique value propositions of making every Friday a payday, it is noteworthy that the encore campaign ended on Wednesday August 23^rd and the first interest payment to investors happened on Friday, August 25^th. Payday Friday is a sacrosanct proposition on MonieWorx®

The encore campaign attracted strong interest from Nigerians in diaspora – particularly those resident in the US, India, Canada, the UK, China, Netherlands, Finland, Germany, Austria, and Philippines. In response,

MonieWorx engaged this audience by hosting interactive sessions on Instagram Live and X Spaces, ensuring transparency and building the trust necessary to grow the MonieWorx community solidifying transparency and trust as the Campaign progressed.

Adesola Adeyinka, the COO of MonieWorx, commented on the SME selection process as a critical step in protecting investor funds and preserving the platform’s zero default record, “The screening committee admits only established and thoroughly vetted SMEs as fundraisers. Beyond the obvious financial screening, 360-degree references are independently obtained on both the business and its promoters to ascertain that their characters and values are in alignment”. She added further that “in the just concluded cohort, only a fifth of the shortlisted applicants were successful.”

Adetokunbo Balogun, the CEO of Cobham Manufacturing, had this to say: “Raising on MonieWorx is cheaper, faster and way more convenient than raising with a traditional bank.”

A Canada-based investor, Grace Aondona, had this to say: “The essence of investing is to beat inflation, and MonieWorx takes me closer to that goal than any other legitimate investing app in Nigeria.”

Oye Oladejo, who is a doctoral student at De Montfort University in the UK and is currently covering MonieWorx as part of her research study on crowdfunding and alternative financing for MSMEs in Nigeria opined: “The MonieSessions on X and Instagram were very insightful. I see that MonieWorx customer propositions compare favourably with what obtains in other climes.”

Some members of the audience at the X Spaces MonieSessions [August 21, 2023] titled ‘Small Investments Do Add Up: Over 50 million crowdsourced for SMEs in 2 days’ declared after the event that, “It was engaging and insightful, with great time management. There were no rambling or boring people.”

The success of this encore campaign underscores the power of collective investing, with fundraisers bringing their network to the marketplace, many investors from the pioneer campaign returned in a show of trust while many small ticket first time investors took advantage of low entry ticket price of ₦1,000 with subsequent increments of ₦50 thereafter. The platform’s inclusive approach allowed a diverse pool of investors to participate thus encouraging investment across all income levels and a renewed vigour in the fight against keeping funds idle.

MonieWorx remains steadfast in its mission to provide SME financing and support to Nigerian businesses, facilitating their success and growth. Its dedication to making investments accessible and profitable for Nigerians regardless of socio-economic standing, continues to drive positive change within the financial sector.

● monieworx, Nigeria’s pioneer regulated debt crowdfunding portal rolls out an optimised version of mobile app.

● monieworx is the digital funding portal operated by Obelix 4.1.1 Alternative Finance Ltd.

SEC-regulated crowdfunding intermediary, Obelix, marks a hundred days since it commenced operations.

In that time, Obelix-operated funding portal, monieworx, enabled 3 SMEs raise 100 million from its retail investor community.

In this same period, the portal has consistently paid interest to investors every Friday in keeping with its proposition of weekly coupon payments. In addition, it is noteworthy that the 30-day and 45-day notes hosted on the portal have fully redeemed.

While returns on traditional investments are typically received monthly, quarterly and sometimes yearly, monieworx has introduced weekly interest payments. The increased frequency of payments gives investors greater control over their cashflow.

Obelix is proud to announce zero-default by the 3 SMEs that raised funds on the portal. This attests to the advantage of investing through regulated crowdfunding portals.

Businesses fundraising on monieworx must go through a thorough vetting process that ensures only the most promising ventures with established and viable business models can secure funding from the growing community of investors on the platform.

Obelix recently introduced an improved version of the monieworx web and mobile apps; allowing investors to conveniently view their investment portfolio through a quick access dashboard that consolidates their account balance, token balance, and income in a single view.

With this latest upgrade, investors can effortlessly participate in crowdfunding campaigns and manage their investment portfolio more efficiently from the device of their choice.

This notable achievement highlights monieworx’s unwavering commitment to providing user-friendly solutions that adapt to the changing requirements of its users.

Obelix is a SME financier in Nigeria that recognises the growing potential of crowdfunding as a transparent and simple financial solution, delivering substantial benefits to the local economy.

Crowdfunding enables investors of all economic backgrounds to support worthwhile projects; driving innovation and growth in Nigeria.

Obelix 4.1.1 Alternative Finance Limited (Obelix), Nigeria’s SEC-regulated Crowdfunding Intermediary, has fundraised N100 million from 9,324 registered small-ticket retail investors for 3 promising small and medium enterprises in just 10 days, thus successfully pioneering an alternative way of raising badly-needed cash for SMEs operating in Nigeria.

The investors were wholly from its waitlist of 42,545 early adopters. The average investment in the Private Notes was N10,725 with the smallest and biggest tickets being N1,200 and N20,000 respectively.

The longest duration of the new asset class for individual investors is 90 days, with a fixed rate of 12% p.a.

Formal SMEs number 40 million in Nigeria, contribute 84% of total employment, 45% of GDP but just 8% of exports and tax collections by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) according to a recent joint report by the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

A total of 15 eligible applications to raise funds were considered by the company’s Screening Committee but only 3 of the SMEs were accepted by Obelix to utilise monieworx, its registered Funding Portal, to embark on their crowdfunding campaigns.

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All the fundraisers have a good corporate governance record and are SMEDAN-registered. The 3 most promising small and medium enterprises that have their securities offerings hosted are, namely: Imose Technologies Limited, Alatiron Nigeria Limited and Q21 Solutions Limited.

According to a Formal MSME Finance Gap in Developing Countries report by the World Bank, the unmet financing needs of Nigeria’s formal SMEs is estimated at US$22 billion yearly. For context, total banking loans was US$66 billion as of December 31, 2022, giving SME loans an 8% share of the loan book.

The risk in this sub-sector is priced in the range of 28% to 35% p.a. Gaining access to finance is by far the biggest constraint to SME growth.

Over 70% of the 40 million SMEs cited a lack of finance and access to financing as the main constraint to their business growth. Access to advisory services and access to markets weighed in at a distant second and third.

According to the Credit Bureau Association of Nigeria (CBAN), only four percent of the 40 million SMEs have access to credit from Nigerian banks. 80% of new SMEs in Nigeria thus die before their fifth year.

Obelix was able to onboard 42,545 users on monieworx, over a 12-month period, through a combination of extensive community engagements to build a suitable “banking replacement”, and the first-of-its-kind early access programme (EAP) that nudges users to join a community or a group.

A surprising insight from its target audience poll of 100,000 people is that they are willing to invest in the absence of outsized financial returns.

Specifically, when asked what they value most, regulated products (15%), small ticket sizes (13%), money-on-demand without a withdrawal penalty (12%), short-term securities (11%), weekly coupon payment (10%), Web3-first approach (10%) and Community Subscription Offer Plans (9%) had a combined response rate of 80%.

Outsized returns (8%) ranked a distant eighth. On aggregate, individual investors are most interested in near-term liquidity (stacked up to 43% of the response rates).

According to McKinsey’s Global Private Markets Annual Review 2022, “private debt is an asset class for all seasons as evidenced by continued fundraising growth, making it the only private asset class to grow fundraising every year since 2011, including through the pandemic”.

“monieworx has broadened participation in a very significant way”, said Lanre Showunmi, Director and Co-founder of Obelix. “Debt is the safety part in a portfolio, and we are on course to become the dominant portal through which small-ticket investors enter the debt capital market in keeping with our commitment to make investing fair, accessible, and inclusive”, he stated.

“SME financing is at an inflection point. We have been presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to win customer primacy and we intend to seize it with both hands”. Thus, Ali Yakubu-Concern, the Managing Director and CEO said, “owning alternative investments will become increasingly valuable”.

“It is said that regulation is how you cap risk”, said Titus Akintola, the Chief Compliance Officer. “This forms the building block in our plan to build a global layer of services for small and medium enterprises”, he continued. We aspire to adopt a safety-first approach in delivering on our “Better – Faster – Cheaper” service charter.

“This is a critical first step in our aspiration to build technology that can create a single Capital Market”, said Salvation Arinze, the Chief Technology Officer. “We are an innovative provider of online retail and SME financial and lifestyle services”.

“There is 100% custody of funds and investment contracts through an arrangement with First Bank, Nigeria’s oldest bank that is registered with Nigeria’s SEC to be a Custodian Bank”, said Abubakar Maibe, Director at Alatiron Nigeria. “This reinforces our confidence and lessens the administrative burden imposed on fundraisers by the Investment Crowdfunding Rules, 2021”.

“Debt crowdfunding presents us with a unique opportunity to access growth capital during this acute funding crunch leveraging alternate financing options that are non-dilutive and founder-friendly by design, on the one part and provides an incentive for the communities in which we operate to get involved through co-creation of value, on the other part”, said Osaretin Sule, the Chief Operating Officer at Imose Technologies Limited. “This way, the local economies become more resilient”.

“We went to Obelix first over our traditional banks”, said Eunice Adeyemi, the Creative Director at Q21 Solutions, “and this was a no-brainer because monieworx® hosted our debt-based securities with more favorable terms, lower interest rates, quicker approval times, and a simpler application process”.

Obelix is widely recognized as the poster child of regulation crowdfunding (Reg CF) and the SME-focused financier of first choice in Nigeria.

Crowdfunding is proving itself as a financial solution that speaks to the largest numbers through its simplicity, its transparency, and the service it provides to the local economy and to projects that are meaningful for retail investors.

What you should know about Obelix 4.1.1 Alternative Finance Ltd

Obelix is an investment-based regulation crowdfunding intermediary incorporated in Nigeria on August 1, 2021, with RC number 1823274 and the operator of a debt-based funding portal branded monieworx with registered trademark number 120623341699.

It was licensed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Nigeria effective December 1, 2022.

The Company has successfully proven its minimum viable product (MVP) and is therefore emerging from stealth mode to achieve product-market-fit (PMF).

Its stated objective is to orchestrate an economic exchange and multilayered ecosystem of new sustainable opportunities in Africa.