In 2020, Segun Awoniyi was running Roadkit, a clothing brand, when he encountered a challenge familiar to many African entrepreneurs: the tools designed for running an online business were not tailored to local realities. A monthly subscription of ₦30,000 for platforms like Shopify was difficult to justify for a small business in Nigeria. Beyond cost, the workflows themselves often assumed infrastructure, payment systems, and customer behavior that did not reflect how commerce actually operated on the ground. That friction became the starting point for what would evolve into a much larger system.
From E-Commerce Platform to Lending Solution
Awoniyi began with a simple question: if existing e-commerce tools are too expensive and misaligned with local needs, why not build one that works from day one for African entrepreneurs? That idea became FinRik Shop, a no-code e-commerce platform designed for small businesses. Unlike typical SaaS products, it launched with paying users immediately. There were no free trials or complex onboarding flows, just a product built to solve a direct pain point: helping entrepreneurs create online stores without technical skills or high setup costs. But as the platform grew, a deeper constraint emerged.
Merchants repeatedly reported the same challenge: even when they had online stores, they struggled to generate consistent sales and often lacked capital to restock inventory. The problem was no longer just access to digital storefronts, it was access to working capital. In response, Awoniyi introduced FinRik LOC, a lending layer embedded within the ecosystem. Using revenue from subscriptions and enterprise services, the company began providing credit directly to merchants on the platform. Over time, this evolved into a self-sustaining lending model that has since disbursed more than ₦250 million to Nigerian SMEs.
The Pivot to WhatsApp
Then came a second insight that reshaped the entire direction of the product. Customers were not behaving the way traditional e-commerce systems assumed they would. In Nigeria, transactions rarely stayed inside websites. Customers browsed products online, but almost always completed purchases through WhatsApp conversations with sellers. Commerce was happening in chat, not on web pages. That behavioral shift became the foundation for a major pivot.
Under Klam Labs, FinRik Shop evolved into Ava Books, a conversational financial operating system built entirely inside WhatsApp. Ava Books allows business owners to manage their operations using simple messages. Instead of dashboards or spreadsheets, users interact with the system the same way they already communicate with customers. A message like “I made a sale” or “Invoice John ₦50,000” is enough for the system to record transactions, generate invoices, and update financial records instantly.
Key Features of Ava Books
Through WhatsApp, users can record sales and expenses, generate and send invoices, track payments and outstanding balances, view financial summaries and reports, set reminders and follow-ups for leads, import existing business data, and access embedded credit facilities. One of the most significant features is its integrated Line of Credit. Built on the foundation of FinRik’s lending experience, the system analyzes transaction behavior and bookkeeping consistency to build a financial profile for each business. This profile is then used to determine credit eligibility, linking day-to-day financial discipline directly to access to capital.
Since launch, Ava Books has onboarded more than 1,000 businesses within three months. Growth has been driven in part by a network of student ambassadors across universities, with around 40 representatives supporting adoption among young entrepreneurs and student-run businesses. The appeal lies in its simplicity: no new apps, no complex dashboards, and no technical training required. It operates within a tool users already rely on daily.
Behavioral Design and Future Vision
For Awoniyi, the insight is as behavioral as it is technological. “Bookkeeping is more about habit than software,” he says. “Even when people have access to tools, they don’t use them consistently if it doesn’t fit how they already work. In Nigeria, that means chat-based communication. So we built the entire financial system inside WhatsApp.” He describes Ava Books not just as bookkeeping software, but as a system that reinforces behavior. By tying financial tracking directly to access to credit, the platform creates a feedback loop where better record-keeping improves financial opportunity.
Beyond bookkeeping and credit, the broader ecosystem continues to expand. Additional services include business registration support, trademark filing, lead generation tools, and Ava Analytics, an AI-powered layer that helps interpret business performance and surface insights without requiring spreadsheets or financial expertise. Taken together, Ava Books represents a shift away from traditional SaaS design toward embedded, conversational infrastructure.
The trajectory from a clothing brand constrained by expensive software to a WhatsApp-native financial system serving thousands of SMEs reflects a broader trend in African fintech: building tools that adapt to user behavior rather than forcing behavior change through software design. In Awoniyi’s view, the direction is clear. The future of SME finance in Africa is not another application. It is a conversation.
