Nigerian foodtech Orda raises $1.1m pre-seed to build software for African restaurants

Orda, a Nigerian start-up, formally known as StarKitchen has raised $1.1Million in pre-seed round to build software for Chefs, caterers and restaurants across Africa.

Orda was founded by Guy Futi and launched in 2020 and describes itself as a cloud-based restaurant operating system built for African chefs and food business owners.

The seed round was led by LoftyInc Capital, with some other investors like Techstars-Boulder, Magic Fund, Hustle Fund, Norrsken Foundation, Microtraction, DFS Labs, Oxford Seed Fund, Enza Capital, Agrolay Advisors, Ire Aderinoke, Jesse Ovia, Ademola Adesina and other angel investors

Futi, while speaking about the inspiration behind the new technology noted that it is set to help thousands of small restaurants in Africa who rely only on offline methods of reconciling transactions such as using pen and paper to balance their transaction account.

“We kept trying to address the very real pain points of chefs, caterers and small restaurants and from that Orda grew. Before Orda, a small food business owner could spend up to 4 hours a day reconciling transactions while trying to figure out losses. We looked to alleviate that burden. In the process we noticed that food business owners were not fully integrated with local payment solutions, online sales channels, and logistic providers. This made their operations even more difficult,” She said.

Meanwhile, with the company’s cloud-based software, Orda wants these businesses not to rely only on manual ways of managing their food business but rather follow up with the new digital technology of making transactions easier.

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Adinlewa Fikayo, CTO of Orda explained in a statement that the start-up was established after months of hearing and gathering feedbacks from customers

“Orda was built from a near 18 months of a collaborative customer feedback loop. We listened to everything, from how African restaurants reconcile inventory, how customers pay, to how they handle logistics and more. We can confidently say that no one has done as much work as we have to build an end-to-end solution for our food business owners. We are excited to usher in much-needed digitization to the sector,” Fikayo said.

The CEO disclosed that the startup cloud-based solution is currently available in Nigeria and Kenya while noting in a statement that the Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) grows 15 percent week-on-week while processing up to 10,000 transactions weekly.

Idris Ayo Bello, the managing partner of the lead investor LoftyInc Capital while speaking about the funding expressed delight in investing with Orda to build a digital infrastructure for African Restaurants.

“We love d investing in Orda because it is building the core digital infrastructure for restaurants across Africa. The team has done hard work by figuring out the core problems that African restaurant owners are facing and is building a solution that can revolutionize the food business across the continent,” Bello said.