Eric Jackson, co-founder of Kenyan wealthtech, Hisa (acquired by Risevest) has stepped down.
Two months ago, Risevest, a leading Nigerian wealthtech announced the official acquisition of its Kenyan counterpart, Hisa.
Following the acquisition, Hisa’s recently appointed CEO Eric Jackson and former head of product & innovation became the CTO of Hisa. Co-founder Erick Asuma already left the business in July 2023. There is a third unaccounted-for Hisa co-founder, Eunice Thairu.
Hisa announced Jackson as CEO in August 2023, after Asuma stepped down. Asuma’s LinkedIn profile suggests the Risevest acquisition was very advanced by mid-2023. “I assembled and managed a dedicated team, steering the business from inception to its acquisition by Rise, a Nigerian fintech,” reads Asuma’s profile. Perhaps, Risevest would have announced Hisa’s acquisition at the same time as Chaka’s in September 2023.
At Jackson’s takeover, Hisa had over 25,000 users with $2M traded. They raised over $250,000 in early-stage funding and were once valued at $5 million. Hisa’s investors include angel investors like Chipper Cash co-founders, Ham Serunjogi (Ugandan) and Majid Moujaled (Ghanaian), Estonia-based Startup Wise Guys, Proximity Ventures, and Faida Investment Bank. The Kenyan investment bank, Faida provides local stock trading services to Hisa.
We believe that these were the key indicators factored into the Risevest deal, and Jackson was appointed to stabilise the ship to get the acquisition over the line. “The period from January to August 2024, where I managed the app solo to keep it running for our users, was especially challenging (emphasis ours),” Jackson wrote in his farewell post.
Hisa’s founding story
Erick Asuma started Hisa in January 2020 to enable Kenyans to invest in international stocks. Eke Urum and Bosun Olanrewaju launched Risevest (formerly, cashestate) in late 2019 to do the same for Nigerians. Before then, US stocks were less accessible to retail investors outside the US. Yet, currency devaluation and inflation were eroding the wealth of many Africans. Thus, a service like Risevest, and Hisa that democratised access to US stocks for Africans was innovative.
After growing Hisa, Asuma left to start a new venture, Wall Street Africa (WSA). WSA is a data and information company that runs The Kenyan Wall Street.
Asuma founded The Kenyan Wall Street, a local investor-focused publication in 2016 before Hisa. Both Jackson and Leah Wakarima were his former colleagues before they joined him on Hisa in September 2020 and August 2021, respectively. At The Kenyan Wall Street, Jackson led technical teams while Wakarima was a financial analyst.
For Asuma, leaving Hisa to build an information company seems to continue his life’s work. “Drawing insights from my experiences at Kenyan Wall Street, I have been assembling a formidable team in the last few months to establish a new venture with the ambition to become the foremost distributor of financial data and a premier news source for Africa’s financial services community,” Asuma told TechCabal in August 2023.
Leah has stayed on as the Chief Operating Officer of Hisa, managing local employees and reporting to Eke Urum.
According to Jackson’s LinkedIn post, Hisa was another opportunity to build “great products”. Now, “it’s time for a brief pause…and literally ‘touch some grass'” having spent the last nine years building four startups.
Jackson’s love for building spans advertising and media, finance and investing and sports. “In the meantime, you’ll find me at the Mashuuru Sports Complex, where we are building East Africa’s high-performance, multi-discipline sports complex”.
With Hisa integrated into the Risevest group, they now have over 650,000 users with a presence in four African countries: Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and Uganda.
