Founder
The founder behind the circle.
Alternative Circle is operator-led. The capital, the partnership architecture, and the long-term thesis sit with the founder.
A Kenyan entrepreneur who has spent more than fifteen years building companies that own their operating layer.
Kevin founded Alternative Circle in 2015 as a holding company — a single vehicle for long, concentrated bets on durable African businesses. The first was Shika, a digital-credit product that raised $1.1M from CreditInfo, scaled to hundreds of thousands of users, and exited in 2020. He went on to co-found Oye, a fintech platform for the continent’s ~100 million boda (motorbike) riders — starting with Kenya’s ~2.5 million — backed by Britam and TotalEnergies, and chairs Dhahabu, which is building premium Kenyan tea and coffee brands for the Caspian and Gulf markets.
Out of the work at Shika, he founded what became DFSAK — the industry body that bridged Kenya’s digital lenders and the Central Bank through the digital-credit regulatory transition. He writes on African founders, capital, and the 7th-Generation principle, and hosts the long-form podcast Let The Cake Bake.
His full ventures, writing, leadership, and press are on kevinmutiso.com.