Changing How Investment Clubs Operate- The Chamasoft Story

A son of two career parents, Martin Njuguna wonders how he ended up an entrepreneur. In his own words, his parents did not even own a kiosk, they just taught. Inspiration is drawn from different places, and Martin’s clearly came outside of home.

Today, he is the force behind Chamasoft, a web-based accounting software for investment clubs, popularly known as Chamas.  When I first spoke with Martin in 2013, Chamasoft was testing its application and was trying to attract its first clients.  Last week when I met Martin for lunch, he informed me that they now had over 4,000 active users, and they are now working  integrating the system with various banks.  

Chamasoft was born out of an observation Martin made. People shied away from forming and investing aggressively in clubs because of certain fundamental problems:

1. Because an investment club is not full time work, most members were not willing to be single handedly responsible for the finances of the club. Even in cases where a member was willing, they did not have the time to rigorously maintain the club’s accounts, which resulted to inaccuracies and often loss of trust.
2. Many clubs had suffered in the hands of dishonest treasurers. Some would steal from the club leading to its collapse, while others would give themselves loans, in the period in between meetings, which they’d refund days before the meeting.
3. The fact that most chamas meet monthly or quarterly with little activity in between meetings, most people view them as a minor investment option, and more of a social gathering. This limited growth of the clubs as they were not top of mind for members.

Chamasoft was designed to solve the above three problems. Now that Chamasoft is integrating with banks, it implies that once a member banks his/her money, they input the details of the deposit and where it should be credited, then all the treasurer has to do is reconcile the accounts and confirm with the bank statement. Each member has access to the chama platform and they’re able to view theirs, and other members’ contributions. This means that the chama is not just a place they “send” the little surplus they get, it is an active investment platform.

The member platform on Chamasoft

Initially, Chamasoft was an application strictly for investment clubs/chamas as they’re popularly called.  However over time, the software has proven to be useful for small company saccos, associations that need to track subscriptions and events payments, fundraising/pledge management etc.

So what’s next? In addition to aggressively pursuing integration with more banks, Chamasoft is looking to launch related products, and to get into other markets. Martin is currently eyeing South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana.