"Keep at it. It gets easier!"
Africa Prize alumna and creator and founder of Zenafri, Elizabeth Kperrun, spoke to us about why she decided to bootstrap her business and how she managed to keep her company growing by getting creative and remaining lean.
Can you briefly describe your innovation and tell us what inspired you to create it?
Zenafri creates educational mobile apps and multimedia content that teach basic numeracy and literacy skills to children ages one to seven.
We focus on merging education with technology and incorporate African cultural elements, such as local languages and indigenous folk tales, to create content that makes learning easier. This is important because many African children learn how to communicate first in their mother tongue, but their school systems don’t have mother tongue-based education.
On starting school, children are introduced to a new language for the first time (usually English or French) and are expected to immediately start learning more advanced concepts in that language.
Our apps and content help bridge that gap by providing locally relevant educational content.
Why did you decide to bootstrap your business and build it up without external funding?
Initially this wasn’t a decision we actively took as much as we were compelled to take it.
Early on, we simply were not attractive to investors since we were a new company with no experience.
However, as we have grown, we have consciously decided to build as much as we can without external funding. While we aim to be sustainable and eventually profitable, we are primarily an impact focused company. Typically, external funding comes with the pressure to become profitable quickly at the expense of other goals.
Were you worried about the risks of not securing external funding?
Yes, we were worried about the risks, especially as cash is the lifeblood of any business. Our biggest fear was that we would simply run out of funds.
While we were developing some of our apps, there were times when we didn’t know where the funds for that month’s salary would come from. To keep going we had to operate very lean and for a long time, it was just myself and my co-founder working on the business.
How did you grow by bootstrapping, and how did you overcome any challenges that you faced?
When bootstrapping, you have to be inventive. We did a number of things to ensure we kept growing and heading towards our goals.
I did the business development while also being the creative director for the content, including providing voice overs for some of the apps and video characters. My co-founder was responsible for the technical aspects - he coded our apps, handled art and animation and did some voice overs as well.
We did as much as we could ourselves because the resources to hire simply weren’t there.
We applied for many grant opportunities and business competitions and were awarded a few. This helped us immensely and the money often provided the runway we needed to develop a new product.
We also had to get creative. At one point in 2017, we only had three months of funds left and there were no grant opportunities on the horizon. So, we made a quick decision. We took about three weeks off and built about 20 mini-apps, covering off-brand topics like dieting tips and exercise routines. We developed them quickly and put them on the Play Store using our personal accounts and put in some ads as a revenue source.
Those apps generated enough revenue to keep our three-person team running for almost a year while we kept building our products.
Do you have any advice from your experience of bootstrapping that you would like to share with others?
- Be sure you are passionate about the business, because bootstrapping can be challenging and in the tough times your passion might be all that keeps you going.
- Have a co-founder (if possible!), so you’ll always have someone to talk to who fully understands what you are going through.
- Look for grant opportunities as the funds might just be enough to get you to your next milestone.
What stage have you now reached with your business, and what are your next steps?
Our business has grown quite a bit. We now have four educational apps and have reached over 200,000 children across Africa. To reach a wider audience, we are working on Sade’s Stories, an animated series based on African folktales.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re also building Koyamu, a platform for early learners, where we’ll aggregate locally relevant content, including-books, videos, audiobooks and games.
What one tip for success would you give to your fellow innovators?
Keep at it. It gets easier!
Find out more about Elizabeth's educational content by visiting the Zenafri website.
Missed part one of our bootstrapping series? You can catch up here.