About Sycamore NG

Babatunde Akin-Moses is the CEO and Co-founder of Sycamore NG: A peer to peer (P2P) lending platform that connects lenders to borrowers, with focus on small and medium sized businesses (SMEs).

Prior to 2018, many people would have pegged me as someone who would climb the corporate ladder up to the executive level, having had close to a decade experience in industry and multinational consulting firms.

However, I have always had a passion for entrepreneurship and SMEs. While at PwC, I was the deputy head of the firm’s Tax Academy and pioneered a training program for SMEs in 2017, which still runs till this very day even after I left the practice.

While at business school, I and my co-founders stumbled on some interesting data. Only 1% of all loans given out in corporate Nigeria goes to all the 37 million estimated SMEs in Nigeria. We decided to do something about it and that’s how Sycamore was born.

Incorporated in 2018 from my living room, Sycamore has since grown to a 16-man team, with a corporate office in the commercial area of Surulere Lagos. We have been able to connect investors to over 2,000 customers since the time, who have funded these businesses with over about a quarter of a billion naira collectively. These businesses range from several industries such as transportation, hospitality, education, and health care.

Sycamore has been able to maintain a very low default rate on its loans, as it places a premium on the character of its borrowers. We have a methodology to vet applicants’ integrity on our platform: a process which has been pivotal to our success so far. We are not resting on our achievements in any way and we have plans to extend our platform to a few more African countries in the next 2 or 3 years.