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HerVestThe Story
Summary
Solape spent years in financial services marketing before becoming CEO of HerVest, a Lagos-based company founded in August 2020 with Yomi Ogunleye. TechCrunch reported over 4,000 women on the platform in 2021, and Praxis Journal reported over 40,000 members in 2024.
Details
Solape spent years in marketing for financial services companies. TechCrunch reported in 2021 that Solape's last role before becoming CEO of HerVest was head of marketing for a capital market conglomerate. TechCrunch says Solape concluded that women in Nigeria and across Africa showed very low adoption of financial services, especially rural women and women who work on farms. The article says that experience gave Solape insight into the need for more access to financial services for women.
TechCrunch says HerVest was founded in August 2020 by Solape and Yomi Ogunleye. The 2021 profile lists Solape as CEO and describes the company as based in Lagos, Nigeria. Notes for an episode of the ESMT Berlin podcast Campus 10178, titled Fintech is a feminist issue, introduce Solape as co-founder and CEO of HerVest. The notes call it a women-focused, inclusive fintech platform that applies a gender lens to traditional financial services.
TechCrunch reported in September 2021 that HerVest had raised a friends and family round of $100,000 earlier that year. The article says the company planned to use the capital to add to its nine-person team, strengthen digital infrastructure and accelerate marketing. Just over a year after Solape started the company, the article says, more than 4,000 women were on the platform. HerVest presented at the Startup Battlefield on the day the article ran. The article also says HerVest planned to roll out into other West and East African countries in 2022, and it quotes Solape saying HerVest funds are held in trust by FBNQuest Trustees Limited.
A Praxis Journal profile dated 2024 describes HerVest as providing affordable financial services as credit, pension and insurance. The customers it names are smallholder women farmers and women-led micro small and medium enterprises in Africa. The profile says HerVest has over 40,000 members. The same profile calls Solape a gender finance expert and a best-selling author of Stripped: An African Woman's Guide to Building Generational Wealth.
