Jibu and Overflow combines microfinance, franchising, and urban utility models to capitalize and equip emerging market entrepreneurs to launch and grow safe drinking water franchises. Decentralized water treatment technology has existed for more than a decade, but the last mile business model and technology needed to get customers safe drinking water at home has not existed. By providing local entrepreneurs both the tracks to run in (franchise system, SoPs, and brand) and the resources (capitalization, business IT, and training),

Jibu has launched hundreds of locally owned businesses and more 2000 reseller points, as well as created over 1,500 jobs in the past five years.

Jibu is Swahili for the “solution” or “answer”. Our mission is to equip entrepreneurs to profitably solve community challenges for themselves.

Problem we try to solve:

Lack of meaningful business ownership opportunities and massive under-employment trap many people in emerging markets to an undesirable standard of living. At the same time, about a billion people do not have access to daily necessities such as affordable drinking water.

In the markets where Jibu operates (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo), unemployment is as high as 60% among youth. At the same time, small business ownership and growth is stifled in a large part because unsecured financing is virtually impossible and secured financing rates are more than 20% APR. Even if entrepreneurs are able to raise informal financing from friends and relatives, they then face a myriad of doing-business challenges including those related to local regulators, supply chain input costs and reliability, and a lack of business management know-how.

Latent entrepreneurial capacity exists to solve the essential necessities gaps in urban emerging markets, but an avalanche of systemic barriers suffocate small business before it can grow past a subsistence stage thereby limiting job creation and economic growth.

Our solution:

Jibu key innovation is combining financing with a technology-enabled franchise system.

We provide entrepreneurs with regulatory certifications, supply chain economies of scale, a common brand, Jibu business management app suite of tools including PoS and CRM, water treatment equipment, and business know-how  down to the day to day standard operating procedures. Because of the unfair advantage that a Jibu franchise provides to entrepreneurs, we are able to also provide affordable start-up financing. (In a traditional franchise model, franchisees capitalize the system.)

Jibu franchises are high-visibility retail points with on-site production / manufacturing. Franchise owners pay a franchise licensing fee and Jibu builds out a franchise, provides training, and coordinates launch with the new franchise owner.

Safe drinking water is the anchor product (we are able to treat water from any source), and the franchise network is a platform for all essential services which now includes cooking fuel (LPG) and fortified porridge, a staple food in East Africa.