One might think that the folks behind MADCash are perhaps, a little mad. The start-up founded by Nuraizah Shamsul Baharin (Aizah), JP Valdes and Musyrifah Malek has an ambitious vision – to touch one million lives through financial and business education, and micro-funding. And today, they are well on their way to achieving just that.
MADCash, which stands for (Multiply Assist Donate Cash) is a Shariah-compliant Fintech company that works with women entrepreneurs to help them achieve greater financial security by providing micro-funding, business and financial education to grow their micro- businesses, with a goal of creating a future bankability score.
The start-up has its headquarters in Kuala Lumpur and is expanding its operations to Singapore this year as one in seven social enterprise start-ups in the inaugural cohort for the 10-week Technology for Sustainable Social Impact (TS2) accelerator programme, a collaborative initiative by NUS Enterprise and the Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise, raiSE.
MADCash offers Syariah-compliant micro-funding with 0% interest to eligible women entrepreneurs throughout the year, with amounts ranging from RM1,000 to RM5,000 in Malayasia, and between S$2,000 to S$3,000 in Singapore.
The funding amount is provided with a structured MADCash programme that includes financial literacy education, entrepreneurship development, assistance in building the credit standing of entrepreneurs.
Scratching an itch after over a decade of community work supporting women
Back in 2019, Co-founder, Aizah joined the UNCDF Financial Innovation Lab to pursue her interest in fintech. She had worked with women business owners in Malaysia for years and saw firsthand the challenges and day-to-day struggles in setting up a business and keeping it afloat in the long run.
These women entrepreneurs may have been blacklisted or have low credit score. Majority of them did not have access to funding institutions, could not qualify for traditional financial services or were unbanked with no access to legal funding options.
Female-run businesses make up between 40% to 60% of all micro-small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Southeast Asia, yet many of these businesses are not seen because the business is not registered.
“My theory was that a donation can be done in a pay-it-forward business model. If a small donation can help a woman entrepreneur stabilise and grow her business, then when she pays it back, the funding goes to another woman entrepreneur to help her grow her business. I believe that this continuous flow of funding will keep circulating and helping our community,” said Aizah.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit Malaysia in 2020, she took the opportunity to test the idea. “We raised RM3,000 from friends and provided an interest free loan of RM1000 each to three ladies, with the intention to use the loan as a pay-it-forward model. We kept reviewing their progress and testing new approaches.”
Many bumps on the road later, she learnt that loans alone are not enough. To make this business model sustainable, they had to go much further: micro-funding must be coupled with knowledge upgrade, mentoring, strong networks and peer support.
Today, the team has provided over RM800,000 in micro-funding to about 400 women, and worked with at least 1000 women entrepreneurs in the MADCash programme. We also facilitated RM1.5M loans that were distributed directly from Bank Islam to our beneficiaries in Malaysia.
Leaning into the start-up ecosystem in Singapore and Malaysia
To build a sustainable business, MADCash was quick to change tack. After months of garnering donations from the public in 2021, MADCash decided to raise funds from financial institutions and banks in Malaysia that have a strong incentive and desire to work with the women in local communities. Today, MADCash’s corporate partners include Maybank, Hong Leong Islamic Bank and PayNet.
The team also joined accelerators in Singapore and Malaysia to explore the networks and mentoring support needed to grow the business. Her friend and lawyer, Malek, and MADCash’s product lead, JP, soon stepped up as co-founders. MADCash then went on to secure pre-seed funding in 2022, and RM 5 million in pre-Series A funding in 2023.
The funds go towards enhancing MADCash’s e-learning platform, which uses artificial intelligence, help defray operational and marketing costs, and fund the expansion of the start-up within Southeast Asia.
Aizah shared,“BLOCK71 and the TS2 accelerator programme team have been incredibly supportive. They have been engaged throughout and committed to supporting us and giving value. The way Yuen Ping and team keep showing up and helping when we needed it - really amazing service.”
In particular, the team found the introduction to their mentor, Joe Rouse, Ambassador-at-Large for the global start-up community at NUS Enterprise most helpful. “We continued to engage with him even after we completed the TS2 Accelerator Programme.”
Today, the start-up’s tech platform allows MADCash’s corporate partners to track the impact of their investments, view repayment statistics, and enable women entrepreneurs to track their income and repayments at the same time.
Crossing borders to serve a growing community of women entrepreneurs
MADCash is currently running programmes in Malaysia and Tajikistan. The programme acts as an incubator – women who join must be committed to growing their business and giving back to the community. Using a combination of online content and physical workshops, the team is able to run the MADCash programme multiple times throughout the year and localise content to fit women entrepreneurs in different locations.
JP is candid about the challenges of scaling up, “As MADCash grew bigger, we needed to upgrade and streamline our processes; thus also improving our online platform to map and support these changes. As we expand to other markets, we needed to make our online platform multilingual and include more modular functions.”
Sharing her personal take on measuring success, Aizah mused, “I am happy that I can pay salary every month to the people that I am responsible for. But in the long run, we want to expand to multiple markets, stay on course, and impact one million lives.”
