Julian Kyula, a senior preacher at The Purpose Center Church in Nairobi, is the founder of Mobile Decisioning Company (MoDe), a fintech spanning over 26 countries including Indonesia, 14 African nations and several Middle Eastern states.
According to MoDe's website, the company started in 2010 with the airtime industry in mind, and 8 years later it is reported to be one of the largest airtime companies in the world.
In an interview with Forbes magazine in 2013, Kyula described MoDe as a nano-finance company that lends credit worldwide, as low as $0.5 (Ksh50), profitably through mobile phones.
“When you are in need of cash at 3 a.m. and you cannot access the ATM, or you run out of internet bundles somewhere in Africa, or want a bus coupon or need to buy a day’s worth of electricity in a prepaid facility, that is when MoDE steps in,” he explained.
Speaking to How We made it in Africa in 2015, he intimated that his journey into entrepreneurship began when he worked with a real estate agency from the UK where he helped in evaluating assets.
Before that, he intimated that he has worked as a waiter and driver and was rejected when he applied for a job as a security guard in an establishment.
As of 2018, MoDe was reported to be advancing more than 6 million loans per day and lent an aggregate credit amount of over Ksh80 billion in 2017.
Kyula opened up about his biggest inspirations in the world of business and entrepreneurship.
"My biggest mentor in business is a man called Jesus. He literally worked himself out of a job and ceded control in three years.
"If you study Jesus as a leader, his articulate training of leaders and his decision to go away so that his disciples could do what he taught them, is perhaps one of the biggest secrets of leadership that a lot of people have not been able to tap into," he stated.
He also attributed his success to Bill Gates and Preacher Myles Munroe, and in the lessons that he had acquired while doing odd jobs early on in his career.
Kyula is also the chairman of Beulah Holdings, a group he founded to focus on housing projects across Kenya with a niche in affordable housing solutions for the lower and middle-income brackets.
He has been recognized as CNBC East Africa Entrepreneur of the Year 2015, IBM Global Entrepreneur 2012 and has been a Top 40 under 40 entrepreneur twice in Kenya.
He has been featured severally in global leading publications including Forbes Magazine, Bloomberg International, New York Times, as well as local publications.
He is reported to have spoken in various platforms across the world including Oxford University, various events in Silicon Valley, SIBOS in Singapore and the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi during the visit of former US president Barrack Obama among others.
Kyula stepped aside from active duty as CEO in 2018 to play background roles in the company.
