companies

Asaak

Kampala fintech using machine-learning credit scoring built on ride-hailing and delivery data to finance motorcycles and smartphones for East African gig workers.

Asaak was founded in Soroti, Uganda in 2016 by Anthony Leontiev and Edward Egwalu, starting out lending to farmers and small businesses before pivoting in 2019 to asset financing for boda boda motorcycle-taxi drivers, one of East Africa's largest sources of gig-economy income and one that traditional banks have historically treated as too informal to underwrite. The company's core innovation is the Asaak Credit Score, a machine-learning model that builds a creditworthiness profile from a driver's earnings, trip history and ratings on platforms like Bolt, Uber, SafeBoda and Jumia, rather than requiring the formal payslips, collateral or credit bureau history that standard bank underwriting demands and that most gig workers simply don't have. Asaak raised $30 million in pre-Series A equity and debt funding in January 2022 from investors including Founders Factory Africa, Resolute Ventures and Social Capital, and now operates across Uganda with partnerships tied to major ride-hailing and delivery platforms, financing motorcycles through a lease-to-own structure that typically runs 12 to 30 months.

Founded

2016

Headquarters

Kampala, Uganda

Sector

enterprise