In early 2020, Tunisian entrepreneur Maher Jaballah founded Arsenal Bache, a small company that produces flexible technical textiles used by trucks and trailers, with no idea of what lay ahead. The COVID-19 pandemic soon disrupted global supply chains, reduced consumer demand, and quarantined the labor force, resulting in an economic downturn that put companies like Maher’s at risk of permanent closure.
Through the USAID-funded Jobs, Opportunities, and Business Success (JOBS) activity, Chemonics supported the growth of Tunisian micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), increasing access to finance, strengthening the Tunisian workforce, and advocating for improvements in the country’s business-enabling environment through targeted assistance and policy reform. This support is critical, considering that MSMEs make up about 98% of businesses in Tunisia, and account for 40% of the gross domestic product and 56% of the country’s employment.
To ensure MSMEs like Arsenal Bache could access finance to weather the economic effects of COVID-19, we partnered with Tunisia’s Cash Deposits and Consignments (Caisse des Dêpots et Consignations or CDC) and other key stakeholders to leverage the country’s 700 million TND ($225 million) COVID Emergency Fund to create a digital solution: JoussourInvest, the country’s first online marketplace designed to match MSMEs with private investors.
JoussourInvest was co-designed through extensive consultations with key stakeholders—the Ministry of Finance, Tunisian Venture Capital Professional Association, the Tunisian Stock Exchange, and local business owners—by identifying the key barriers to MSMEs’ access to equity finance. The resulting platform, launched in September 2020 with carefully designed features, allows users to perform a significant portion of the investment transaction process online, improving deal flows, increasing competition and transparency, improving efficiencies, and promoting the private sector’s engagement in the digital economy.
These features were beneficial because they led to:
- Improved deal flow: The financial marketplace serves as a robust source of deal flow for fund managers, increasing the number of business proposals and investment pitches they receive from high-growth MSMEs, enabling them to allocate more equity funds to these businesses.
- Increased competition and transparency: The platform empowers MSMEs to collaborate efficiently with different fund managers concurrently, thereby enhancing MSMEs’ bargaining position and fostering competition among investment firms.
- Higher efficiency: The digital platform optimizes the flow and quality of information between MSMEs and fund managers in both directions, generating higher returns at a lower cost.
Even amidst tremendous uncertainties, JoussourInvest mobilized capital for Tunisian MSMEs by leveraging digital transformation, curating attractive investment opportunities, focusing on resilient sectors (such as technology), and mitigating investor risk through non-financial support provided to businesses that met the eligibility criteria. As a result, by January 2024, 67 investors, 3,535 MSMEs, and 117 consulting firms had registered for the platform, resulting in 519 requests for equity investments made by MSMEs and 32 completed transactions, valued at 68 million TND ($21.8 million). Maher Jaballah, who needed additional investment to expand Arsenal Bache’s operations, registered with JoussourInvest shortly after its launch and within months received an investment of 540,000 TND ($180,000). He used this funding to open a new factory and hire more staff — training them to optimize processes and increase the quality of the textiles to compete with European competitors.
