SC Ventures - CEO, Solv

Role Overview

This is a country leadership mandate with a regional horizon: running the Kenya business end to end while extending the MSME proposition into additional East African markets. The role carries full profit-and-loss accountability, and the working week is split between commercial oversight — revenue, customer acquisition, portfolio quality — and hands-on ecosystem building with banks, fintechs, distributors, corporates and regulators. The employer's ability to scale a sustainable small-business platform in the region rises and falls on how well this person converts MSME working-capital demand into products, partnerships and lending outcomes that hold up commercially and from a governance standpoint.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the country strategy and P&L. Set and execute the Kenya business plan, steward profitability and sustainable growth, and assess where product or geographic expansion makes commercial sense across East Africa.
• Scale the MSME platform. Build a durable business serving micro, small and medium enterprises, grounded in a real understanding of their cash-flow cycles, supply chain pressures and financing gaps.
• Grow revenue and the customer base. Drive acquisition, retention, engagement and portfolio performance, and identify new segments, markets and expansion initiatives that feed the pipeline.
• Design solutions, not just products. Shape offerings that widen MSME access to finance, procurement, distribution and growth opportunities, including embedded finance and supply chain financing structures.
• Build the partnership network. Originate and manage relationships with financial institutions, fintechs, distributors, corporates, industry associations and regulators to unlock capital, markets and customers.
• Steer product and innovation direction. Work alongside product, technology, risk and operations colleagues to keep the roadmap commercially viable and scalable, and to move new offerings from concept to launch.
• Manage portfolio and performance metrics. Track business, portfolio and customer KPIs, monitor lending quality in conjunction with financing partners, and maintain reporting that leadership can act on.
• Own risk, compliance and governance. Oversee identification, assessment, mitigation and reporting of regulatory, conduct and financial crime risks; shape compliance policies and controls across all risk types; escalate issues when tolerance thresholds are breached; and lead relationships with each regulator the company answers to.
• Represent the business externally. Serve as the primary spokesperson in Kenya with investors, regulators, partners and other external stakeholders, and keep executive leadership informed with regular strategic updates and market insight.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in business administration, finance, economics, commerce, engineering, technology or a comparable discipline.
• 15 or more years of leadership experience in fintech, SME banking, embedded finance, digital commerce, lending, supply chain finance or the broader financial services sector.
• Demonstrated success leading and scaling a business unit, country operation or growth function, with direct accountability for revenue growth and overall business performance.
• Working fluency in MSME financing, working capital solutions, credit ecosystems and distribution networks — not just awareness of the sector, but a track record of operating within it.
• Proven ability to originate and sustain strategic partnerships that translate into commercial results.
• Experience managing cross-functional teams in fast-moving, high-growth settings, including hiring and developing a high-performing local team.
• Entrepreneurial, commercially driven outlook that pairs strategic vision with disciplined execution.
• East Africa market experience is strongly preferred.

What We Offer / Why Join

• A genuinely entrepreneurial mandate: the freedom to shape country strategy, build the local team and influence how the business expands across East Africa.
• Ecosystem-level impact — the work sits at the intersection of MSME growth, embedded finance and supply chain financing, where solutions change how small businesses access capital and markets.
• Senior visibility and ownership, with a direct line into executive leadership and regular exposure to investors, regulators and strategic partners.