Jibu Inc
Organization Details
Jibu trains and finances emerging market entrepreneurs to build profitable social franchises designed to serve the most basic needs of their community, with an anchor product of radically affordable drinking water. At the core of their game changing innovation is the integration of franchisor and financial services, successfully contextualized to emerging markets.
Jibu entrepreneurs serve customers who previously had to boil their water to make it safe to drink. Jibu franchise owners produce and package affordable drinking water in 5-20L re-usable containers and sell to the 1-2 km radius surrounding their high visibility production-retail location.
By combining franchising with micro-finance, Jibu has wrapped a scalable and sustainable business model around decentralized water treatment technology. We unleash the latent entrepreneurial potential of communities to own and grow lasting, neighborhood-based solutions to basic necessities.
Impact Story
Jibu means 'solution' in Swahili. We tackle the systemic roots of the opportunity and drinking water crises by training and capitalizing regular people to be successful social entrepreneurs. Built on a belief in the power of co-investment with local business owners, Jibu is decentralizing access to safe drinking water to make it affordable, ubiquitous and utterly convenient through franchising.
Jibu has a direct imact on access to safe drinking water (SDG6), decent jobs and economic resilient communities (SDG8) and positive impact on the climate (SDG13). Jibu reates economically viable and sutainable infrastructure for drinking water, ensures management and maintenance of the systems (SDG6). It creates local jobs (at least 50% women and 80% youth), stimulating economic resilience (SDG8). Owning a franchise is a life-changing opportunity, creating generational wealth for the familie of the franchisee and creates numerous additional jobs in the community by reselling the water. Jibu also saves carbon emissions (SDG13) by avoiding the usage of charcoal to boil water and save single use plastic.