Kountable Hires Tech Finance Executive to Grow Leadership Team
SAN FRANCISCO, March 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Kountable, the global trade marketplace, has hired Joel Onodera as its VP of Finance. Kountable has selected Onodera due to his international experience and leadership in finance and operations at some of the most successful public technology firms over the past three decades. He developed financial planning, product strategy and operations teams at Apple, Sony, Nike and Prezi among others.
At Apple, Onodera set product strategy for the Macintosh product line in Japan. At Nike, he was responsible for connecting demand and supply chain planning and at Prezi, he built international finance and data analysis teams to scale their SaaS business.
As Kountable scales globally, this new hire is part of its strategy to build the sophisticated financial operations required to build a marketplace that connects Africa's demand chains to Europe, Asia and North America's supply chains. Having an executive who has worked in publicly traded and globally recognized brands in early stage and late-stage, post IPO, were all factors in bringing Onodera on board.
Onodera will oversee the successful execution of financial governance risk and compliance initiatives along with Kountable's financial operations from currency, KYC, AML, accounts receivable and supply chain and fintech financial tools as Kountable builds its global marketplace and deals with highly regulated data.
"We determined at this stage in our growth and global expansion in field operations and financial planning to hire someone who has experience in the global sales of tangible goods as well as international SaaS businesses expertise," said CEO Chris Hale, "and Onodera had all of that, plus an operating style that fits our mission, vision and culture."
Kountable, founded in 2015, launched in Rwanda and now has offices in Kenya, Ghana, and the US. The company is building a global ecosystem that unlocks the value creation and problem-solving capability of the world's greatest entrepreneurs. By nurturing business growth of SMEs and providing a marketplace for the end payers and multinational suppliers, the company is aggregating the demand end of the supply chain.
"We learned a lot during our evolution from a fintech company into a trading platform where we are building a global marketplace," said Hale. "We have come to understand our responsibilities to our platform users when moving goods and services all over the planet, accounting for investor capital and calculating return on investment."
"The opportunity for Kountable is really large," said Onodera. "There aren't that many companies that are addressing a 4 trillion-dollar market gap, because what we are doing is not easy. We are learning a lot along the way, which will enable us to keep leading the way in solving these problems."
"At Nike, it was all about understanding and creating an emotional tie with the consumer, the athlete. For Kountable, our focus is on understanding and meeting the needs of our local entrepreneurs. This is what is going to make us successful."
About Kountable: Kountable is a global marketplace that harnesses the massively transformative capabilities of entrepreneurs in emerging markets who are solving some of the world's biggest problems. In developing economies, entrepreneurs serve as a vital link between institutions and foreign suppliers of specialized goods and equipment. Kountable's marketplace connects these local entrepreneurs with multinational suppliers and top-quality goods that are then delivered to end payers such as governments, NGOs or corporations looking to complete large scale projects. Kountable, based in San Francisco, launched in Rwanda in 2015 and now has offices in Rwanda, Kenya, Ghana, and the US. For information, visit www.kountable.com.
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