Company: Hagbad

Founders: Shahad Haid / Tibebe Demissie

Headquarters: London, United Kingdom

Most Recent Valuation: N/A

Employees: 4

Founded: 2025

In One Sentence: “Hagbad enables underserved users to build a financial identity and learn how to manage, grow, and invest their money ethically by digitalising traditional group savings (ROSCAs) into a formalised platform.”

Top quote: “For many people, ambition isn’t the problem, access is. Hagbad exists to change that by turning community into capital, enabling people who have been excluded from traditional financial systems to reach their financial goals, fund their dreams, and support one another in building wealth in a way that aligns with their values.”

Who are you building your product/service for, and what painful problem are you taking away from their day?

*Answers provided by Shahmad Haid.

We are building Hagbad for diaspora communities in the UK who utilise informal group savings (ROSCAs) due to limited access to ethical, interest-free financial services. However, these users often face bank account shutdowns from large transfers, challenges in organising and managing groups, and a lack of transparency.

Hagbad addresses these pain points while bridging a clear socioeconomic gap by tailoring financial literacy to each user, providing pathways to ethical investment opportunities, and enabling timely payments to build credit and financial identity aligned with their values.

If a top-tier VC is reading this, what would you want them to understand about your company in 30 seconds?

Hagbad is building the financial infrastructure for communities that have been historically excluded from traditional banking. Millions already use informal group savings to manage their money, but these systems remain unrecognised, and disconnected from credit and investment opportunities.

Why has nobody else done what you’re doing?

While informal group savings are widely used, they have largely remained offline and culturally embedded, making them difficult to formalise without losing trust. Existing fintech solutions either overlook these communities or fail to align with their need for ethical, interest-free finance.

Hagbad differentiates itself by building on trusted behaviours and enhancing them through AI, enabling smarter group management, personalised financial literacy, and pathways to credit and ethical investment while preserving community trust.

How did you meet, and why have you partnered with each other on this business?

I first met Tibebe at a university Muay Thai society about three years ago, but at the time it wasn’t anything significant, we just crossed paths and didn’t stay in touch. The timing never quite aligned after that. When I returned to training the following year, he had moved to Manchester for a placement year, so we ended up missing each other again.

We reconnected at a university fight night, and that’s when we properly spoke and realised how well we complemented each other. Tibebe is a developer and I’m non-technical, so the partnership felt natural that’s grown through consistency and a shared discipline, at work and in training.

What was the “this has to exist” moment that made you start the company?

I realised this had to exist when I was standing outside Simon Squibb’s door, pitching my restaurant idea with no capital and just belief. I didn’t want to build a “normal” restaurant, I wanted something different, but like many others, I hit the same wall: access to funding without compromising my values. I turned to group savings as a solution, thinking it was just my workaround, but quickly realised this was a shared reality for so many people.

People are constantly forced to bootstrap in the gap between ideas and investment, often delaying or abandoning opportunities altogether. That moment shifted everything for me. I didn’t just want to build a savings app, I wanted to create a system where people and communities could invest in themselves and each other, grow their skills, fund their ideas, and access opportunities aligned with their values, without relying on loans or falling into debt.

How do you make money? Which part of your business model are you most excited about scaling?

Hagbad generates revenue through transaction and service fees, partnerships with banks seeking access to underserved and hard to reach customer segments, revenue sharing with credit building and credit bureau partners, and affiliate income from financial literacy and aligned financial products.

We are most excited about scaling our partnerships and data driven credit building layer, as it not only drives sustainable revenue but also unlocks long term value by integrating our users into the formal financial system.

Which proof points matter most right now?

We currently have over 500 beta users actively using Hagbad to manage their ROSCAs, generating real-time feedback since opening to the public within the past month. Alongside this, we are piloting our financial literacy offering to deepen user engagement and demonstrate measurable impact as we continue to scale.

How does your product/service make the world a better place?

For many people, ambition isn’t the problem, access is. Hagbad exists to change that by turning community into capital, enabling people who have been excluded from traditional financial systems to reach their financial goals, fund their dreams, and support one another in building wealth in a way that aligns with their values. It is about more than money, it is about opportunity, and giving people the ability to move forward and realise a future that once felt out of reach.

What’s been your biggest unexpected challenge so far, and what did it force you to learn quickly?

One of the biggest unexpected challenges has been navigating the complexity of financial regulations and identifying the right teams to guide us. It forced us to quickly develop a deeper understanding of compliance & risk. With more of a focus to be intentional about building the right advisory network early to ensure we are scaling in a secure and sustainable way.

What does success look like in 12 months? What about in 5 years?

In 12 months, success looks like Hagbad supporting over 10,000 users in reaching their financial goals and ambitions, facilitating over £5 million in community savings and payout cycles, and delivering structured financial literacy to 80% of active users. Hagbad also establishes partnerships with at least two credit bureaus, enabling thousands of users to begin building a recognised financial identity through consistent, on-time contributions.

In 5 years, success looks like Hagbad scaling to over 1 million users across the UK, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, facilitating over £1 billion in community-led savings. Hagbad becomes a recognised financial infrastructure, formalising ROSCAs at scale, with over 60% of users building credit histories, strong adoption of ethical investment products, and measurable improvements in financial inclusion across underserved communities.

What type of partner or collaborator would most accelerate your journey right now? (If relevant, which roles are you hiring for?)

Strategic partnerships with financial institutions offering Sharia-compliant investment products, such as HSBC, alongside credit bureaus, would significantly accelerate Hagbad’s growth. These collaborations would enable us to provide users with trusted, values-aligned pathways to invest and grow their wealth, while also ensuring that their consistent savings behaviour is recognised in the formal financial system through credit building.

The impact is twofold: it strengthens our value proposition to users by unlocking real financial progression, and it positions Hagbad as a key distribution and engagement channel for institutions looking to reach underserved, high-potential communities at scale.

Finish this sentence: “We’ll know we’ve really made it when…”

…Hagbad is supporting over 20,000 communities, with clear case studies showing the real impact we’ve created, and when people are talking about the product for us because of the value it brings to their lives.”

Website: https://www.hagbad.co.uk

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