Ecosystem Insider

Issue #28: Anchor raised $1 million pre-seed, Duplo raised $4.3 million seed, and more

September 2, 2022

Welcome to this week’s review of the funding rounds in the African startup space.

We are currently doing a bit of house-keeping, which is why we were unable to release this issue yesterday. Expect great news from us soon!

If you’re new here, welcome to AU-Startups. We help keep you updated on happenings within the African tech startup ecosystem.

This week was a great one for Nigeria startups with two raising seed funding and one raising pre-seed funding. Fintech startups were dominant this week with a total of four funding rounds closed.

Now to the details.

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Funding

Nigerian banking-as-a-service fintech startup, Anchor, has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding. The BaaS fintech was backed by Byld Ventures, Y Combinator, Luno Expeditions, Niche Capital, Mountain Peak Capital, and angel investors such as SeamlessHR, CEO Emmanuel Okeleji.

Anchor helps developers embed and build banking products, such as bank accounts, funds transfers, savings products, issuing cards, and offering loans, using its APIs, dashboards, and tools. The startup, which was among the Y Combinator Summer 2022 batch, plans to use the capital raised to attract the best talents, improve the company’s tech infrastructure, invest in compliance and regulatory infrastructure, and acquire customers.

Duplo, a Nigerian B2B payment startup, has raised $4.3 million in seed funding just seven months after it announced its $1.3 million pre-seed investment. The investors that participated in the seed round include Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Tribe Capital, Commerce Ventures, Basecamp Fund, Y Combinator, and existing investor Oui Capital.

The startup which was launched last year September provides an end-to-end solution for finance teams helping automate the back-office processes of generating and processing invoices, receiving and approving bills, collecting and disbursing funds, and completing account reconciliation. The company would be leveraging the fund to launch new products and expand into new verticals in Nigeria.

Nigerian fintech startup, Grey, has raised $2 million in seed funding from Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Heirloom Fund, True Culture Fund, angel investors Alan Rutledge, Samvit Ramadurgam, Karthik Ramakrishnan, and other high-profile investors.

Grey allows users of its platform to create a foreign USD, GBP, and EUR bank account for free, send money to the UK and Europe and receive payments from over 88 countries, which they can then withdraw directly to mobile money or their local bank account. The company which was founded in 2021 says the funding would also allow it to extend its product suite to remittances, person-to-person and B2B payments.

Kenya’s embedded finance fintech Pezesha recently closed a $11 million pre-Series A equity-debt round led by Women’s World Banking Capital Partners II.

Founded in 2017, Pezesha has built a scalable digital lending infrastructure that allows both traditional and non-traditional finance institutions to offer working capital (loans) to MSMEs. The startup is seeking to make use of the investment to expand into Nigeria, Rwanda and Francophone Africa so as to bridge a $330 billion financing deficit for the small enterprises that make up 90% of Africa’s businesses.

South African all-in-one cloud-based gym management platform Octiv has raised an eight-figure Series A funding round led by Knife Capital.

The platform offers functionalities like member management and billing, gateway integrations, scheduling, task management, payroll and website integrations to its customers. Octiv, which is currently present in 27 countries, plans to use the investment to speed up its global expansion, enhance product offerings and scale customer support in line with its aggressive growth.

KarmSolar, Egypt’s leading private power utility and solar energy company, has raised a new round of capital through a minority stake round, which was supported by US-based Synergy Consulting as the sell-side advisor.

The company aims to spearhead the growth of the private solar energy market in Egypt through the introduction of innovative and integrated solutions across the industrial, agricultural, commercial and tourism sectors.

The capital raised will be used to support its existing power generation and distribution businesses, as well as help enable its venture into new business verticals such as solar water desalination solutions provider KarmWater, and electric mobility company KarmCharge to flourish.

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Venture Capital

eco.business Fund, an impact investment fund advised by Finance in Motion, has extended $15 million to Fidelity Bank in its first investment in Ghana. This new partnership will help expand access to finance for agribusinesses in Ghana.

The eco.business Fund provides dedicated financing and technical assistance to financial institutions and businesses committed to sustainability and focuses on four economic sectors: agriculture and agri-processing, fishery and aquaculture, forestry, and sustainable tourism.