Interview With Kenfield Griffith, Co-Founder and CEO of tappi

In this edition of Founder Spotlight, we feature Kenfield Griffith, the founder of tappi, a full-stack SaaS business designed for small businesses in Africa. tappi, launched in 2022 by Kenfield Griffith and Louis Majanja, helps companies find customers online.

Hi, Kenfield Griffith. Glad to be interviewing you. Can you share the story behind founding tappi and the specific inspiration or problem you aimed to address in the market?

Louis and I built a customer experience platform called Ajua that helped tier 1 banks, mobile operators, and large retailers get a better understanding of their customers to drive operational efficiency, retention, and new business strategy. While building Ajua, we constantly received requests from MSMEs seeking similar solutions for their businesses. We attempted to solve for MSMEs within Ajua but soon realized MSMEs required a distinctly different approach, and there was also a massively untapped opportunity to get them online, boost their visibility and connect them with the continent’s 240mn online shoppers. This realization prompted us to step down from our operating roles at Ajua and launch tappi, an end-to-end SaaS platform for MSMEs across Africa.

MSMEs are the backbone of Africa’s economy and drive an estimated worth of $20bn. However, MSMEs still face huge challenges in establishing a trusted online presence to find customers on the Internet. The current tools are too complex, require an international credit card or the businesses end up on the internet in places where trust is difficult to gauge. This presents major hurdles in terms of accessing and converting new customers to grow their businesses.

Can you highlight the key tools and solutions that tappi offers businesses to enhance their online presence and improve customer interactions?

Our goal is to fundamentally help businesses find customers online. However, we believe there are 3 pieces to the puzzle; 1. The ability to be found via a Google search; 2. The ability to be trusted as a business when found; 3. the ability to amplify reach beyond the ‘regular’ customers they know.

We empower these businesses to promote their brand, product, and services through advertising on Google, Facebook, and Instagram using airtime credit or mobile money as well as enabling them to consolidate payments with verified reviews to build online trust. We’re deeply committed to helping small businesses find customers and through our software solutions, we firmly believe we’re empowering MSME them with the digital tools that will ultimately bring them more success.

How does tappi integrate technology to provide businesses with effective tools for online growth, and are there plans for further technological advancements in the platform?

tappi is built on Payments, Messaging, and AI, which are all fundamental aspects of our company’s end-to-end digital commerce stack, which we’re building to become the SEO backbone to increase revenue for MSMEs across the continent. We embed AI and automation into key areas of the customer journey to facilitate a seamless online business profile creation process and through our intuitive chatbox experience, businesses are provided a free website and access to automated SEO marketing tools.

Beyond individual and small businesses, how does tappi contribute to the broader business community, and are there initiatives or partnerships in place to extend the impact of the platform?

There are over 45 million MSMEs across the continent looking to build long-term financial well- being, and we believe strong partnerships will allow us to scale to drive growth for these MSMEs. As such we are currently partnered with MTN, Nigeria and are in the process of shoring up other partnerships as we scale.

Can you share a standout client success story where tappi’s tools played a pivotal role in helping a business grow its online presence and enhance customer experiences?

One of our major success stories has been a local eatery in Nairobi. They were especially keen to boost the amount of customers coming into their business. However, they had a really small amount of reviews which created major hurdles in terms of their credibility and building trust with prospective customers. By using the tappi app they were able to develop a strong marketing campaign that featured a number of exclusive offers and coupons and ultimately led to a host of new customers and reviews.

Aside from an expected increase in revenue, they’ve also now managed to establish a robust tappi CRM capturing hundreds of their customers which they use to establish long-term relationships as a critical focus for the sustainability and growth of their business in the future.

tappi has undergone notable growth. Can you walk us through the early stages, including the pre-seed phase and the strategies to secure initial funding to kickstart the platform’s development?

Our goal is to drive PMF (product market fit). As such in the early days before we raised, we did and continue to do many experiments and A/B testing to drive value to our customers. Once we had signals of PMF, we went to raise our pre-seed round. Raising capital is not easy, so having as many data points as possible that give investors a sense of where the business is going has been our approach. However, we still have a lot to do and a lot to learn as we focus on building for our customers.

How does tappi nurture relationships with investors, and what key factors do you believe contribute to maintaining strong and productive partnerships with those who support the platform’s growth?

Our goal is to develop meaningful relationships with our investors. As such we have a cadence of business updates and meeting with investors for advice when needed.

How does tappi approach cap table management, and what strategies are in place to ensure a healthy cap structure, especially considering the evolving needs of the business and potential future funding rounds?

As a pre-seed company, we will spend time this year organizing tappi’s cap table structure as part of our governance process and for future funding rounds.

For businesses new to tappi, can you walk us through the user onboarding process and how businesses can quickly leverage the platform’s tools to enhance their online presence?

Customers can access tappi through two main channels – direct sales and via our partnerships with telecoms such as MTN. Through our direct sales channels, users can download our app via Android or create their website through our WhatsApp chat function so the barriers entries are very low. Both options also exist through our partnerships model but users can simply gain access by purchasing tappi within add-on as part of their standard data bundle.

During the registration process, users fill out responses to eight simple questions about their business, some of the questions are aided through AI to generate a link to their website which is optimized for Google Search. Once this is live, users receive access to a host of services including Ad creation to promote their businesses and send offers to customers, functionalities to request reviews and payments as well as a range of additional features that strengthen their capacity to attract new customers and retain the ones they have.

What valuable advice or lessons from your experience with tappi for aspiring entrepreneurs just starting their journey would you share to guide them?

Stay the course, and stay focused.