Boost Technology, Project IKE: Empowering retailers with insights to increase their resilience

As part of our Strive Community Innovation Fund, we’re working with Boost Technology to develop and test a new service that combines data analysis, behavioral science, and conversational commerce to empower small retailers with insights to drive digital confidence and business resilience. The insights and efficiencies of digitization deliver the most benefits to distributors and suppliers. This project tries to change that.

Retailers access Boost via WhatsApp, a familiar channel that is convenient and accessible to customers wherever they are on their digital journey. Boost’s conversational commerce experience enables retailers to register, place orders (via a data-light web app), and receive invoices and updates about their orders. All payments from retailers are captured digitally on the Boost platform and reflected on customer statements available to the retailer. Once retailers are consistently ordering with Boost, they are offered embedded working capital, called “Stock Boosts,” to enable them to reduce stockouts, and therefore maximize potential sales. 

Digital ordering and credit services for micro- and small convenience retailers have grown in popularity across emerging markets. This program—Project IKE—is unique in that it uses transaction data to empower retailers with real-time insights from their business to drive improved business outcomes. The service aims to transform retailers' order history into digestible insights that enable them to better understand the health and patterns of their business, so that they can make more informed decisions. If successful, this program would give retailers greater business confidence, higher levels of digital inventory ordering, increased access to finance, and ultimately profitability growth. 

With support from Strive Community, as well as CGAP, Boost will test Project IKE in Nigeria with a network of 5,000 entrepreneurs who are part of Shakti, a Unilever and Growing Businesses Foundation (GBF) initiative to empower female retail entrepreneurs across 16 states. Shakti entrepreneurs are typically single-person businesses working in peri-urban and rural areas who start out selling door-to-door or from tabletops and may eventually grow to operate brick-and-mortar stores. 

The program will capture and integrate learnings so that Boost can replicate the service in South Africa and Ghana, extending it to more than 10,000 active retailers transacting on the Boost platform. Beyond the impact on entrepreneurs working with Boost, this program will provide valuable learnings for the sector on how best to effectively deploy digital-first solutions to small retailers to maximize impact and uptake. Key questions the project will address include: 

• What types of data-driven insights are the most helpful to small business owners?
• Does the combination of credit and advisory support lead to better financial outcomes for small business owners?
• Can conversational commerce help first-time smartphone users improve their confidence in and understanding of digital tools?
• What is the right mix of in-person and digital delivery of insights to retailers? Can they be shifted to a fully digital interaction?

About Boost Technology

Boost is a B2B commerce platform powering growth for Africa’s convenience economy. They make it radically easy for the entire supply ecosystem to better serve retailers, wherever they are on their digital journey. The company also boosts their small retailer customers with working capital at a fee so that they can match their supply with demand. 

Since June 2020, Boost has grown to provide stock ordering of food and essentials to over 5,000 small retailers, partnering with distributors and manufacturers across Ghana, South Africa, and Nigeria.