Here Is How Tavonga Muchuchuti Is Helping Startups Secure Funding Through Xavier Africa

Here Is How Tavonga Muchuchuti is helping startups secure funding through Xavier Africa. Muchuchuti holds a Summa Cum Laude graduate in International Finance and Banking, is the 2019 Botswana AAccountacy College (BAC) Valedictorian, the first recipient for the International Student prize for exceptional academic performance across all Sheffield Hallam partner universities and a Yale Young Africa Scholar. He is urrently an MBA candidate with Sheffiled Hallam University (UK). 

Q: You have found your niche in the tech zone, what are some of the things you are
focused on at Xavier Africa?

A: At Xavier Africa our main business line is centered around exploiting large scale datasets through machine learning (a division of artificial intelligence) to create solutions that help ease access to debt finance monitoring for non-bank financial institutions.

Q:  Why did you choose this specific line of work and what are you most fond of about your career?

A: Over the last 11 years, I developed a fond passion for financial technology and its potential to completely eradicate financial exclusion in the African continent. Despite the creation of various applications and systems addressing financial exclusion; majority of them are not complex enough to aid African entrepreneurs with the step-by-step processes of improving their business from a financial standpoint. Therefore, I have made it my life’s purpose to equip myself with the knowledge, tools and team that can propel me towards creating financial technology that can help my fellow Africans achieve their financial goals.

Thus, all the steps I have taken since then including studying International Finance and Banking, working closely with advanced technology firms and starting Xavier Africa with esteemed financial services professionals have been aligned directly towards my life’s’ purpose.

Q: What are some of the areas of growth or opportunity in this space that you have made your key priority?

A: We’ve identified a large influx in cash allocated to non-bank financial institutions within the African stratosphere coupled with a large portion of companies actively looking for funding– however the funding is not getting to startups that deserve it due to the high risk involved; thus our current solutions are focused on de-risking the capital allocation process to ease funding for startups.

Q:  What advice can you give other finance individuals interested in pursuing your line of work today?

A: I will reiterate Steve Jobs’ words that say – “You’ve got to find what you love… Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do,”.  Therefore loving what you do is the key to withstanding the challenges that come with the work we do – so everyone must dedicate their lives to finding what they love and working tirelessly around it.

Q: What are some of the challenges brought about by Covid-19 and how have you been able to address them?

A: Our biggest challenge throughout the pandemic has been raising capital to grow and scale our flagship product across multiple markets – as a result we have had to focus on bootstrapping by offering software development services to local firms to fund our enterprise.

Q: What are your hobbies and any extra work you are in engaged in when you are not in the office?

A: Quite frankly I love to solve problems and in my spare time together with the Xavier Africa research team go around trying to figure out complex multi-faceted problems. For example, we recently developed a Whatsapp chatbot in collaboration with 9 local NGOs to help protect more rape and domestic abuse survivors and have currently managed to helped over 50 people since launch 3 weeks ago.