Author: Han Jiang, UNCDF
In early 2021, SHE Investments, a social enterprise, launched KOTRA Riel – the first gender-focused and culturally tailored business support app to help women-owned businesses in Cambodia. This initiative was made possible with support from the Women MSME Fintech Innovation Fund through the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
About SHE Investments:
SHE Investments is a social enterprise based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Launched in 2015 with a pilot SHE Incubator Program, SHE Investments is the first gender-focused, culturally tailored incubator for women entrepreneurs in Cambodia. Alongside the SHE Incubator Program, they also design and deliver Accelerator, Financial Literacy, Digital Literacy, Investment Readiness and other programs and innovative tools designed to build a gender inclusive ecosystem to enable women entrepreneurs to scale their businesses and create social, economic, and environmental impact for their communities.
The first application tailored to Cambodian women entrepreneurs
KOTRA Riel aims to tackle the challenge of access to finance, one of the greatest obstacles women entrepreneurs face when scaling up their businesses. In 2019, 72 percent of Cambodian women entrepreneurs reported that they were interested in getting a loan. But 58 percent of women who applied for a loan were rejected due to insufficient collateral and limited borrowers’ information on financial conditions, business operations and revenue.
Digital tools for accounting and finance exist in Cambodia; but many of these are tailored to well-educated and those who speak English. Many women entrepreneurs find it difficult to navigate these tools because they are not designed with them at the center. KOTRA Riel had to be different – but how could it meet their needs and facilitate their business operations?
KOTRA Riel is tackling two key challenges; educating female entrepreneurs on financial literacy, and to digitalize users’ bookkeeping behaviour. The in-person training allows us to build strong connections, trust, and also to look at users’ behaviors and impressions when using the app. Users get a chance to ask questions directly, build trust, and especially help them feel comfortable with the tools. Many of them are new to using apps but having us around allows them to feel comfortable when they make mistakes and to trust the app that we created just for them.
- James Wilson, Head of Innovation & Enterprise Support at SHE Investments, explained the reasoning behind the creation of KOTRA Riel
KOTRA Riel is a simple, user-friendly and Khmer-language application for entrepreneurs to track income, expenses, inventory, cash-flow, visualize business analysis and activities, and – maybe most importantly — generate reports of business transactions for financial institutions. The application is free to use, up to 100 transaction records per month.
The feedback from women entrepreneurs have been very positive. They liked the simple and intuitive app that is designed to be handy for people with even basic financial literacy. KOTRA Riel made managing their businesses easier compared to their previous ways of bookkeeping—writing in a book, recording voice notes on the phone and inputting records in the computer after work.
Now, with a simple click of a button, they can access records and monitor transactions, revenue, and expense, at any time and any place, as long as they have a smartphone. More importantly, these transaction reports can be exported from KOTRA Riel to serve as supporting documents when women entrepreneurs apply for loans. This is a significant contribution to scaling up women-owned and women-led micro-enterprises. The app gives them a digital footprint and allows them to produce the necessary documentation financial institutions need to process loan applications.
KOTRA Riel is the app that I use for recording daily sales revenue in my shop. It has helped me make financial decisions for my business, and I love using the app because it was designed particularly for women business owners like me. It is simple to use. But it fits my business needs as well. More than that, I can add all the information about suppliers and customers, which makes it easy for me to make payments with them too. I've also learned how to be more technical through the app and I can use the data for making loan applications easier to further improve my business.
- Sreypouv Tan, a local business owner of Coffee and Honey, shared how KOTRA Riel is helping her business
Before I have KOTRA Riel, I didn’t really know my true income. At the end of day, the app will notify me to record my finances. The app calculates the profits and expenses for me. It’s in the Khmer language and we can record our data for a long time. Because when we do business, we need to get loans from the bank. Therefore, if we have KOTRA Riel, we can send the finance report to the bank.
- Soung Sila, the owner of Sila’s Restaurant and Samurai Saloon, thanked KOTRA Riel for making it easier to understand her financial activities
The SHE Investments team provided training for women entrepreneurs, from using the app to improving their managerial skills, financial and digital literacy. The users can ask the KOTRA Riel team on Facebook any technical questions whenever they have technical questions. By connecting the digital and in-person experience, women entrepreneurs who used KOTRA Riel — aged 32 to 48 — felt supported to adopt this new digital tool for their business. During the pandemic, SHE Investments continued training online on KOTRA Riel, as well as providing mini grants to mitigate challenges faced by women entrepreneurs.
Learning from KOTRA Riel in supporting women entrepreneurs
At a remarkable speed since the launch of KOTRA Riel app, more than 6,000 micro, small, and medium enterprises have registered for the app. KOTRA Riel has enabled women entrepreneurs in particular to operate their businesses effectively and access finance more easily.
KOTRA Riel is a vivid example of the power of technical innovation combined with localization. The app was designed specifically for women entrepreneurs in Cambodia, containing the intuitive interface and language options for them. This was combined with concerted efforts to train women entrepreneurs and provide continuous support to build trust and increase usage. Through tailored innovation and skills building, KOTRA Riel is playing an important role in efforts to accelerate inclusive digital economies.
About Women MSME FinTech Innovation Fund
This innovation is supported by the Women MSME FinTech Innovation Fund, which is part of a regional programme ‘Catalyzing Women’s Entrepreneurship: Creating a Gender-Responsive Entrepreneurial Ecosystem’ funded by the Government of Canada and implemented by the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in partnership with the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF). The programme aims to accelerate women entrepreneurs in the Asia-Pacific region through addressing challenges faced at three levels: enabling policy environment, access to finance and use of ICT for entrepreneurship. Funding support is also provided by the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank (FMO) and Visa Inc. The Innovation Fund is hosted by UNCDF’s Shaping Inclusive Finance Transformations (SHIFT) in ASEAN programme, supported by the Australian Government.
About ESCAP
ESCAP serves as the United Nations’ regional hub promoting cooperation among countries to achieve inclusive and sustainable development. The largest regional intergovernmental platform with 53 Member States and 9 Associate Members, ESCAP has emerged as a strong regional think-tank offering countries sound analytical products that shed insight into the evolving economic, social and environmental dynamics of the region.
About UNCDF
The UN Capital Development Fund makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world’s 46 least developed countries (LDCs). UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development. UNCDF pursues innovative financing solutions through: (1) financial inclusion, which expands the opportunities for individuals, households, and small and medium-sized enterprises to participate in the local economy, while also providing differentiated products for women and men so they can climb out of poverty and manage their financial lives; (2) local development finance, which shows how fiscal decentralization, innovative municipal finance, and structured project finance can drive public and private funding that underpins local economic expansion, women’s economic empowerment, climate adaptation, and sustainable development; and (3) a least developed countries investment platform that deploys a tailored set of financial instruments to a growing pipeline of impactful projects in the "missing middle."
Disclaimer
The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of UNCDF, the United Nations, or any of its affiliated organizations, or its Member States.