Although the news has not been officially confirmed by the company, Kudi Inc., a San Francisco based fintech company founded by two Nigerians, have raised $5.8 million from Partech. It is the third multi-million dollars investment coming to a Nigerian fintech company in the first quarter of 2019.
A filing by the company to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on March 18, 2019 and seen by BusinessDay shows that Kudi was offered $7.3 million but eventually settled for $5.8 in equities to its new investors.
Following the round of funding, Tidjane Deme, general partner of Partech Africa Fund – the principal investor – will join the board of Kudi as a director. Weetracker which broke the news said there were possibilities of the involvement of multiple investors in the funding.
The development is coming two months after Partech Africa Fund was doubled from $70 million to $143 million. The fund plans to make 20 to 25 investments across roughly ten countries over the next several years.
BusinessDay sent an email to Kudi co-founder, Adeyinka Adewale who is yet to respond as at the time of going to press.
Founded in 2016 by Adewale and Pelumi Aboluwarin, Y Combinator-backed Kudi is a payment company that leverages conversational interfaces, natural language processing and artificial intelligence (AI) to enable users pay bills and pay each other faster and in a frictionless manner. Essentially, Kudi is a chatbot domiciled on Facebook Messenger, Telegram and Skype; while chatting with the chatbot, users can transfer money, buy airtime, pay bills as well as remind them when those bills are due and keep track of account details. Money transfer on Kudi comes at no cost to users. However, the startup charges a convenience fee of N100 for some transfers and cable subscriptions.
As at 2018, the company said it had enabled over N10 million worth of transactions and it has grown 125 per cent week over week in revenue.
The first quarter of 2019 has seen remarkable investments in Nigerian fintech companies. In February, TeamApt, a payment infrastructure provider, secured $5.5 million Series A round from Nigerian-based private equity firm, Quantum Capital Partners.
One Finance (OneFi) also raised a $5 million debt facility for its consumer facing platform, Paylater from Lendable, a New York and Nairobi-based technology funding provider, to enable it extend more loans to customers.
OneFi also became the first financial technology startup in Nigeria to acquire another fintech company – Amplify Payments – in 2019. The acquisition was to help OneFi diversify its financial service offerings as Amplify’s assets, tradements and flagship products Amplify and mTransfers are added to its growing portfolio.
With the TeamApt funding and OneFi acquisition of Amplify Payments, experts are hoping it is a signal that local investments in tech startups are on the rise. Local investments have so far played second fiddle to the more dominant foreign investments.
