Mad about growing cash: Fintech outfit is changing women’s lives

MALAYSIANSKINI | While the long pandemic lockdowns sent many businesses to their knees, it was a period of remarkable growth for a group of remarkable women entrepreneurs.

Even more remarkable, the women never even thought of being entrepreneurs.

But as the pandemic turned the world upside down, an engineer launched a Nyonya food paste business, a pharmacist introduced an Ayurvedic beauty product range, and a housewife cultivated western herbs.

Today, they are all thriving businesspersons - winning awards and moving their home-based manufacturing into factories to meet growing demand.

The thread that goes through all their success stories is MADCash, a microfinance scheme launched by 52-year-old Nuraizah Shamsul Baharin.

In 2023 alone, the work of MADCash - an acronym for Multiply-Assist-Donate - supporting women entrepreneurs has impacted 8,550 lives, she said.

It all started when Nuraizah and some friends decided to extend small interest-free loans to three women in 2020.

Within a month, the women recorded sales of RM3,000, RM4,000, and RM11,000 respectively, said the former engineer who is a driving force behind the award-winning fintech operation.

It got Nuraizah thinking.

“I was interested in how small money can help grow an income.”

Microloans for unbanked women entrepreneurs

The experiment turned into MADCash - a platform which turns public donations into interest-free microloans of up to RM5,000 to women entrepreneurs, who would otherwise not have access to credit through conventional means.

“We work with underbanked and unbanked women who have no access to funding and turn them into bankable women running their enterprises,” she said.

MADCash doesn’t take any cuts from public donations, but when Nuraizah started, the business gave donors an option to give an extra 10 percent to help the start-up.

But, Nuraizah said this is no longer needed because MADCash’s operation costs are covered through CSR grants and other funding.

In 2020, it won RM25,000 in the KPMG sustainability challenge, and since then has attracted the attention of funders and venture capitalists.

“Subsequently, three additional funders entrusted us with RM5 million and last year Maybank i-Tekad granted RM2.7 million to aid B40 and zakat recipients,” she said.

Not only does MADCash maintain the fintech microloan platform, it also does the data analysis to vet the microloan applicants to determine their bankability within two years of the loan extension.

It also provides business coaching to ensure the entrepreneurs have a higher chance of repaying the loans within the 10-month credit term and growing their businesses further.

In 2022, MADCash extended RM54,000 in loans to 33 women, while this grew by five folds with a total of 157 women receiving RM354,000 in 2023.

As a marker of success, the loans have a 98 percent repayment rate.

This has helped an idea to organically raise funds to help women during the pandemic, to grow to global proportions.

Having assisted 491 entrepreneurs in Malaysia to date, MADCash is launching the same scheme in Singapore next month and is already in talks with potential partners in Tajikistan.

This year, Nuraizah hopes MADCash can extend loans to 800 women, a move she expects will have a compounding impact on the community.

As the heart of the family, which in turn makes up the basis of society, women are significant change agents.

“One woman impacts 50 lives,” she said.

From homemaker to business leader

Of all the thriving women entrepreneurs who got a kickstart from a MADCash microloan, Nuraizah considers single mum Irene Mositol’s western herb farm at the foothills of Mount Kinabalu the biggest success story yet.

After developing a niche clientele for her herbs among food and beverage outlets and hotels, Irene, who was a homemaker, not only grew her own business but scaled up her production to include 12 other farmers.

By 2022, within a year of working with MADCash, Irene’s team grew their sales by 300 percent and grew their collaboration to 32 farmers.

Having learned preservation and packaging techniques, Irene has also started rolling out a new product using her herbs - herbal salts, under the brand Dumo Wangi.

Irene’s story may have resonated more with Nuraizah because it reflected her upbringing.

Like Irene, Nuraizah’s homemaker mother raised her three children on her own after her husband passed away when Nuraizah was very young, forcing them to rely on welfare.

It was during these formative years that the Kuala Lumpur native developed her business acumen, at one point taking over the Bukit Bintang Girls School co-operative shop and turning it profitable within a year.

“We made a profit of RM5,000, selling anything the school bookshop wasn’t selling and we bought everything we needed from Central Market in Kuala Lumpur,” she said.

Although interested in business, Nuraizah’s life took a different trajectory after she won a scholarship to study engineering, leading her to a career as an electrical engineer with multinational giants like Motorola and Nokia.

Still, she said, her years in engineering have helped her develop a structured way of thinking and analysis, helping her steer MadCash - her late-in-life venture into business - toward success.

Growing its impact

Last year, Nuraizah’s social enterprise attracted RM5 million in venture capital to grow its business and is collaborating with the US Embassy to run an online academy for budding entrepreneurs.

“The first thing they learn is that whatever goes into the right pocket doesn’t come out the left and more importantly, we teach them to pay themselves.

“Women will learn to identify what makes their business unique, where the money is coming in, who their customers are, and how to grow the business,” she said.

MADCash is already exploring possibilities of supporting women who may not be inclined towards business, like gig workers.

“For example, they can buy a motorcycle from the company on a shared ownership programme to assume full ownership through instalments,” she said.

MADCash is also looking to expand its impact by providing training for women to enter politics, as a means to address Malaysia’s declining gender equality ranking, particularly in this crucial area.

With US Embassy support, the firm had in January launched a programme providing mentorship to 50 women, including those from 10 political parties and non-affiliated individuals, who are new to or aspiring to join politics.

Looking back at how far MADCash has come in such a short time, Nuraizah can hardly believe the sort of impact the start-up has had, especially now that it is going beyond entrepreneurship.

“When we first started we were asking for donations of RM100, but a friend told us to ask for the funds that we need. And we did, and we got it.

“I found that people believed in us before we believed in ourselves,” she said.

“This is the most amazing part of this journey. You think you’re doing a small job, but people see that you can impact even more. That’s the greatest thing.”

MALAYSIANSKINI is a series on Malaysians you should know.

In March, we will be featuring notable Malaysian women as part of the Women In Front series for International Women’s Day.

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