aidx
helping ordinary people to achieve the extraordinary
Vision
A world in which financial technology brings us together to fulfil our promise.
Instead of disrupting society, we want to deepen our bonds, creating financial technologies that strengthen communities and empower individuals.
aidx
Founded by MIT graduates Gerard McHugh and Tarig Hilal aidx is a people focussed technology company supporting systems of mutual aid. The company, is registered in the US & the UK and has offices in Cambridge Massachusetts and London, England, was inspired by the founder’s experiences living and working in Africa and the Middle East where they bore witness to extraordinary power of people helping people, through networks of friends, family and community, enabling one another to survive and thrive.
Product
Moja
Moja is aidx’s first product. Built around one of the most effective forms of mutual aid - financial pooling - Moja is a mobile app designed to protect, enhance and strengthen people’s financial networks, enabling them to seize opportunities and thrive.
Team
Founder Chairman
Gerry is an entrepreneur and innovator. Gerry is also the founder and President of Conflict Dynamics, a not-for-profit organization working in conflict resolution and humanitarian action. Gerry has been working for over 30 years to help people affected by conflicts and crisis, fusing together expertise from medical, engineering and political science fields. His experiences of providing acute medical care to critically ill children in Iraq in 1989/1990 shaped a view of seeking to help those in need in times of crisis. He is a graduate of Trinity College (Dublin) and MIT.
Founder CEO
Tarig is an entrepreneur, with experience in strategy, business & research. He is founder of Dalston Consulting Group. Previously he was a Director at Conflict Dynamics International and an advisor to the agricultural consulting firm Badu. He has worked for Crisis UK, the International Crisis Group, the World Bank, and the National Democratic Institute as well as acting as a consultant to businesses in Africa, the Middle East and North America. He is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the MIT Sloan School of Management.
User Research
Dacia has ten years of experience providing support to organizations and companies in strategic planning, programme development, monitoring and evaluation, grant management, research, business plan development and developing curricula for educational programmes. She has worked with both domestic and international non-profit and/or non-governmental organizations, particularly in community development with indigenous communities in Canada and in peace and stabilization, humanitarian interventions, and education in East Africa.
Business Analyst
Ellin Ivarsson is an analyst with 4 years of experience in market research, data analysis and strategy consulting. Over the years, she has become proficient in producing thoughtful and inspired data-driven industry analysis. She has a strong analytical orientation and has experience generating business research and helping businesses understand how they can benefit from their own data production.
Advisors
Shuja Khan is a business executive and investor. He specialises in running customer service businesses that are powered by technology. As Chief Commercial Officer of Cable & Wireless, the Caribbean's largest mobile, TV and broadband provider, he was responsible for marketing, commercial strategy, product management, call centres, digital assets and TV channels. Prior to that he held various commercial leadership roles at Virgin Media, the UK's largest cable provider. Previous to that he spent 10 years working at Deloitte advising both investors and corporations on strategy and execution across a wide range of sectors.
Ahmed El Mahi is an investment professional with over eight years’ experience in making principal investments in European financial assets and speciality finance lending companies. He has advanced graduate degrees in business and public administration with a specific focus on emerging market themes in infrastructure and natural resource sectors and on the ground experience with operating companies in a range of industries in the Middle East and Africa.
David Carlisle has more than a decade of experience working on regulatory affairs. From 2007 to 2012, he worked for the US Department of the Treasury, focused on the development of anti-money laundering policy, and then spent the next 6 years as a consultant advising financial firms on regulatory compliance matters. He is passionate about aiding FinTech companies in obtaining their goals of financial inclusion and enhanced service while achieving best in class compliance practice. He currently works for Elliptic, a London-based provider of compliance solutions for the cryptocurrency space, where he leads regulatory outreach efforts.
Gordon is a civic technology expert with experience in product research, design, and development. While at MIT’s Media Lab he founded Deepstream.tv, a tool for annotating newsworthy live streams, which was used by Univision and NBC News, among others. Gordon previously lived in South Sudan for two years where he was Country Director of Internews which pioneered local media and information initiatives, including building a network of community radio stations.
Rob Fernandes
Rob is a Computer Scientist currently working as Chief Product Officer of ClearCourse Partnership. He has 15 years of experience in payments, product, strategy & innovation; He is startup oriented with multiple exits (at 1, 2 and 3 figure million valuations); market-immersed & visionary product leader; led small teams and large business functions; helped define & capture company strategies; advised wide range of leading payments organisations and startup challengers.
Partners
Hedgehog Lab
To deliver on our vision to build peer to peer mobile applications to support systems of mutual aid in East Africa we have partnered with Hedgehog Lab a world beating global technology consultancy that designs and builds software for the worlds best companies including, Lloyds, Microsoft, Santander, Mitsubishi, B&M & now aidx
Highlights
aidx completes MVP Build
We have been working together for two and half years now, researching, designing and prototyping what we believe will be a game changing product. Our MVP is due for completion in December 2019. 2020 promises to be a big year
Articles
Medium
Covid19 has reminded people of the ties that bind. The industries that will flourish in the post-crisis world are going to be those that honour this new spirit. Finance will be no exception.
Medium
Business plans are unfashionable these days but writing one can help you turn your ideas into reality
The Startup
12 Lessons from our experience as non technical founders of a tech company
The Startup
Insights on Africa's Sharing Economy
Medium
Eight lessons from our experience prototyping products for refugees in Nairobi.
Medium
Notes on adapting design sprint methods outside the US context.
Medium
Notes on adapting design sprint methods outside the US context.
52 Insights
The missed opportunity of building technology that supports mutual aid.
Medium
Insights on reciprocity, size, and types of mutual aid gained by a network graph.
Research
Published papers by aidx
Paper 1
How innovative systems of self-help and emerging digital technologies can provide new solutions for refugees
Key insights
1. Refugees are ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances
2. The majority of assistance that refugees receive comes from within their social networks and communities
3. Financial pooling is one of the most powerful examples of mutual aid
4. Despite its many strengths mutual aid also presents a number of challenges
5. Digital technologies are failing to support systems of mutual aid
6. There is an opportunity to develop new solutions
© 2017