The firm: Brighter Investment

Alumnus Thijs Mathot came up with a business model that can predict whether a student will be successful. His company Brighter Investment provides loans to students from Africa.

He’s never had any doubts about his choice of aerospace engineering. But after spending a few months at Dutch Space, Thijs Mathot started to wonder: what now? He decided to do a business degree in London and to explore a completely different industry. His new work took him to Mexico. There, the seed was planted that would ultimately lead to the start of his company Brighter Investment. 

In Mexico, Mathot met a school student who was unable to go to university despite his intelligence and good grades because he couldn’t afford the tuition fee and was unable to get a loan from the bank. Mathot and some colleagues managed to raise the funds to enable the boy to study. It seemed a modest sum compared to the potential outcome: a promising future for himself and his family.

The issue continued to preoccupy Mathot. “We live in a market economy”, he says from Vancouver in Canada. “How can you create value without financial resources? I spotted a business opportunity there.” Mathot looked at more than just good grades. He found out all about the Odin Development Compass, a method for testing people’s motivations. He wanted to find out which personality traits are the best predictors of whether a student will be successful and pay back his or her student loan. He put these indicators into a model, added macroeconomic data and came up with a number of scores. “There’s a link between these factors and your return on investment”, he calculated. “This is attractive for investors.”

Mathot decided to pursue the business model further and spoke to students, lecturers and banks in Africa, Asia and South America. At a university in Ghana, he met Richard Adarkwah and they became business partners. 

A crowdfunding campaign in 2014 raised the capital needed to start up with 24 selected students. 

“A hundred students have now successfully completed the programme and there are 400 still studying”, says Mathot. “Only one has dropped out prematurely, because he got a scholarship and no longer needed a loan.” Brighter Investment works with nine educational institutes in Ghana (“We take a very critical approach to the education system”) and provides loans for all study programmes that create value for a student. “Such as engineering courses, shipping and nursing”, explains Mathot. “These lead quickly into a job with good earnings and are not too expensive. The fact that all of the participants are now repaying their loans is proof that it works.”

Mathot can see some areas for improvement. “Only 15% of participants are women. In poor countries, people give preference to sons who want to study. This is despite the fact that our research shows that daughters often prove to be better students. They have to combine multiple tasks from an early age and are highly motivated.”

The long-term aim of Brighter Investment is for local banks to take over the role. “Banks should include student loans in their package of services. Ultimately, graduates are an interesting market for them.” But that is still some way off. Brighter Investment is happy to welcome new investors.