#7: Sproutly
make smart financial decisions young.
My grandmother never had a bank account. She stored her money in her wrapper and a supposed safe spot that only she knew. That seems to be the norm, especially in older African communities.
We have little financial education, and our idea of financial literacy is limited to saving a percentage of our income and avoiding debt. But as we’re now realizing, there’s more to financial management than just savings and debt avoidance—there’s investing, budgeting, planning for retirement and aiming for financial freedom.
Sadly, these aren’t things you can learn in school, so most people go through life without knowing them. My parents taught me how to avoid financial issues, and my undergraduate degree in Economics helped me better understand money. But the finance of an economy and personal finance are different.
It wasn’t until the middle of the pandemic that I started investing in financial knowledge. So far, I’m trying my best and figuring things out. I can’t help but think of how much easier my life would be if I had better financial education in my younger years.
The good news is that this is one of the problems today’s featured product solves, which is why I am so excited to introduce them to you. Let’s get to it.
Product Profile
Name: Sproutly
Website: https://sproutlyhq.com/
Countries Served: Nigeria for now
Product Area: Fintech
Price: Free
Founders: Nzube Pierre-Nwoke [CEO], Maxwell Agu, Prince Akachi
Funding Stage: Raising pre-seed
Year Founded: 2021
Sproutly in the news: Digital Times Africa, Disrupt Africa
In their own words:
Mission: To create the first financially successful African generation by giving them the tools and resources to take control of their financial future.
Sproutly teaches teens how to make smart financial decisions by developing a learning financial environment for teens to explore the world of financial ownership.
As we focus on catering for younger ones, we want to be involved in the early stages of their financial growth through inclusivity. We want to be there to see each child grow financially. Our ultimate goal is to produce young adults who are financially literate and confident.
Half the world's population in 2050 will be between the ages of 13-30, so we believe doing this now will improve the financial standing of our future generation and inadvertently reduce the poverty ratio.
We categorized the Sprouters' journey into two stages; The Early Sprouters from 0 to 12 years old and the Advanced Sprouters from 13 to 17 years old.
Our aim for the Early Sprouters in their early formative and inquisitive years is to create an enabling environment that allows parents to plan and save for their ward’s future and introduce them to the concept of money early on. We want to catch them young as they take on more financial responsibilities like rewards and penalties, giving and receiving—we call them our foundation.
For the Advanced Sprouters, our goal is to mould financially dependent teens and young people who are now allowed to transact, manage and save funds while their parents monitor from a distance. Our tools give parents ultimate control over their ward’s finances and provide the Advanced with Sprouters, who will soon be absorbed into the more complex financial system, a deep sense of ownership and responsibility.
In Conclusion:
Not only do they provide prepaid debit cards for kids, but they also teach financial literacy. Their Sproutly Learners Club has amazing resources on investing, saving and preparing for the future. They’re also launching a technology readiness program that teaches kids 8-18 years old about product design, product management, digital marketing and UX writing.
In their words, the Sproutly Learners Club's goal is to create the first financially successful generation by giving them the tools and resources to take control of their financial futures. Sproutly Learners Club teaches teens how to make smart financial decisions by developing patterned behaviours in our supervised app experience.
With their public beta open to Nigerians and their plans to expand to Ghana and Kenya soon, it’s obvious that the team is busy. I am incredibly excited to see the reach of this product. I have a lot of faith in their brand and product.
If you like what you’ve seen so far, you can check Sproutly out for yourself here.
What do you think about Sproutly?
On an unrelated note:
I’d like to share a cool picture I took of the sunset on Saturday. The sky was too beautiful 😍
Bowing out:
That’s it for this week, folks! I hope you found it enlightening.
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See you next week!
Yours in Product Discovery,
Dumss