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  • Sudanese Fintech Startup Bloom Raises $6.5 Million from Investors

    Sudanese Fintech Startup Bloom Raises $6.5 Million from Investors

    A Sudanese Fintech Startup, named Bloom, has raised $6.5 million from its investors such as Y Combinator, GFC, and Visa to finance its operations.

    The Major investors who participated in this financing include Visa, Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital (GFC), Goodwater Capital, and VentureSouq. The funding from Visa came as an incentive for Bloom’s participation in the global card scheme’s Fintech Fast Track Program which prompted Bloom to form a partnership with them and change its card from Mastercard to Visa.

     

    What The New Funding Means for Bloom

    In an Interview with TechCrunch about the investment from Visa, the CEO, Ahmed Ismail said: “The Visa investment is critical for companies like us for a couple of reasons. One, aligning with Visa as a partner gives you a bunch of benefits, launching products faster, marketing support, and product support; and two, in addition to the investment, Visa Fintech Fast Track enables you to access these incentives in a streamlined way”.

    In March this year, the company announced that it was part of Y Combinator’s winter batch after launching the platform officially and since the waitlist was released that year it showed that over 15,000 people had signed up to the platform at that time and in an interview with TechCrunch, the company founders stated that that number has topped 100,000 and it has being launched already in Sudan but refused to state how many users are actively using the platform.

     

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    The CEO of Bloom has stated that this funding will help the startup to execute its projects and expand to other parts of the Anglo-East African region to countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia.

    In a statement, Ismail said: “Our product is live in Sudan. The plan is to scale in the country and then expand to other markets. We anticipate being in at least one market before the end of the year and a couple earlier next year”.

     

    The Highest In The History of Sudan Tech Ecosystem

    Presently, The funding received by Bloom is the highest in the history of Sudan as the country’s tech ecosystem is considered passive and repellant to foreign investors and only recently accepted foreign investors when Fawry, a Fintech industry, and e-commerce player Alsong came along- the country has been the recipient of international sanctions for 30 years.

    Sudan is located in the eastern part of Africa and has over 500 million inhabitants but the region’s currencies including that of Sudan are prone to depreciation as every year the Sudanese depreciates 15% more to $1. This is why startups such as Bloom and people such as Ismail, Khalid Keenan, and Abdigani Diriye are present to help individuals of that country and region fight against the rising devaluation.

    Bloom Mission

    Bloom as part of its objectives to get more users on its platform offers fee-free accounts for its users to save in dollars and transact in Sudanese Pounds. They also provide either Local cards or Dollar cards which will enable the users to receive remittance free of charge from several countries worldwide and this helps Sudanese nationals in the diaspora.

    They are also in partnership with Export Development banks who helps them in handling their deposits and this generates revenue for Bloom as they charge interest on these deposits, the interchange, and other ancillary streams.

    On both sides, Visa and Bloom executives consider their partnership as one which will be very profitable for both and it will also provide for the adoption of Visa cards in Sudan and the entire Eastern region of Africa which will provide users which will provide users with a fast and secure way to perform transactions online.

     

    Read Also : Ubenwa Secures $2.5M to Help Parents, Clinicians Interpret Baby Cries

     

    In a statement, the Visa country general manager for Sudan and Libya, Ahmed Mohey, said: “Visa is taking the lead as a first mover in digital payments in Sudan. Ware is committed to being a part of Sudan’s economic transformation by bringing our global expertise and capabilities to its government and private-sector partners.

    Together with Bloom, we will continue to drive acceptance of digital payments while finding opportunities to launch new products and services to Sudanese customers and merchants”.
    Also, Roel Janssen, a partner at Global Founders Capital said: “We are very excited by our investment in Bloom.

    Its experienced and talented founding team has the drive and expertise to build a product that is universally valued by consumers, partners, and regulators in Sudan and the wider East Africa region”.

    How Startups Have Helped Developing Countries Grow Their Economy?

    This can be narrowed to “The benefits of startups to an economy”, As we all know startups are founded by entrepreneurs who aim to solve a problem in society. Most startups are known to spring up faster in a developing economy where entrepreneurs aren’t that popular to make an impression in that economy and hence make a profit. Here are the benefits of having a startup in a developing economy:

    i) Creation of Jobs:
    This is the most important impact a startup makes on an economy because with the creation of more startups in a country there will be vacant positions that will need to be filled up by persons hence taking youths out of the streets and into the office or industry. This will help to curb the crime rate as most of them will be too busy to commit crimes because of their workload of them.

    ii) Creation of Wealth:
    Startups mean the coming of more investors who are interested in their projects which means they will be invested in our country which creates wealth for the economy and betterment of the citizens’ lives.

    iii) Increase the GDP:
    GDP which means Gross Domestic Product is a vital role if an economy is expected to excel. By supporting startup creation and the influx of investors in the country it will prompt the GDP to rise which will increase the revenue generated by the country hence the betterment of the economy.

    Conclusion
    Startups play a huge role in boosting the economy of any nation. The step Bloom has taken will have a positive impact on the economy of Sudan and the Anglo-East regions of Africa as a whole. It is worthy to note that Bloom couldn’t have obtained all this without the involvement of investors, and the partnership with Visa.

  • YC-backed Startup Bloom is Helping Sudanese Grow and Preserve their Wealth

    YC-backed Startup Bloom is Helping Sudanese Grow and Preserve their Wealth

    Roughly 400 million people live in Anglophone East Africa, with half under 25. Nearly half of this population do not have a bank account or mobile money despite being one of the fastest-growing regions globally. Those who do, risk being affected by inflation. For example, the average East African currency is believed to devalue about 20% every year.

    Sudan’s YC-backed fintech startup, Bloom, is helping its customers to have a hedge against this rising devaluation. The company offers a “high-yield” savings account, free FX, and adjacent digital banking services so customers can save in a stable currency, the dollar, preserving their wealth, and spend as they go in local currencies.

    Ahmed Ismail, Youcef Oudjidane, Khalid Keenan, and Abdigani Diriye co-founded the company in late 2021. Oudjidane was a managing partner at Class 5 Global, a San Francisco venture company that has financed startups like Careem and Meliuz.

    Ismail, a Sudanese by birth, teamed up with Oudjidane, an Algerian by birth, to hunt for more investments in Africa. After studying several models pioneered by digital-first banks such as TymeBank, Kuda, and FairMoney, they saw a significant need for developing a savings product that addresses what they believe is the most pressing issue facing African consumers: inflation and currency devaluation.

    Bloom is Helping people preserve their money in a stable currency

    The company’s CEO Ahmed Ismail disclosed that — “The problem that we think is most pervasive is consumers’ inability to protect the value of their wealth. So we decided to build a business that does exactly that, that helps people save money in the stable currency and spend as they go in local currencies.”

    So, to develop the project, the company had to bring CTO Keenan and CPO Diriye onboard, who also have roots in eastern Africa. The four graduated from Russell Group universities and have worked at Amazon, Meta, IBM, Uber, Goldman Sachs, and Barclays.

    According to Ismail, research and analysis proved that East Africa (preferably Sudan) was the ideal marketplace for the team to begin their journey. However, the northeastern country doesn’t appear to have a thriving, let alone an active tech ecosystem. After 30 years of international sanctions, it only received its first foreign investment in 2021, when Alsoug, one of the country’s leading fintech and e-commerce companies, raised $5M funding.

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    “We think the right way to build a business is to go after the largest opportunity first. So Sudan is interesting for three reasons. It’s a huge economy, and I believed in 2015, it was Africa’s fifth-largest economy,” he said.

    Buttressing on why Bloom started from Sudan, Ismail explained — “We know it has had some economic challenges since then after the secession of South Sudan. Yet, purchasing power and consumer spending is still amongst the highest on the continent per capita. And most importantly, it’s probably Africa’s most under-invested country from a VC funding perspective, and the most important dynamic I think about Sudan is it’s a friendly place to do business.”

    About Bloom

    Bloom — not to be mistaken for the US investing app for teenagers — is a fintech company that offers fee-free accounts for users to save in dollars and buy and spend in Sudanese pounds. It also provides local and dollar cards and a feature to receive remittance free of charge from several countries globally, mainly from where most of the Sudanese diaspora resides.

    Bloom works with the Export Development Bank, a partner bank that handles deposits. And you can think of Bloom as the technology, customer acquisition, user experience and marketing partner to the bank.

    “People don’t hold Sudanese pounds; they typically either buy dollarised assets like real estate, or they buy land or physical U.S. dollars,” Ismail said. “What we’re offering people is the ability to tokenise that. And in small amounts of money, you’ll be able to hold value, as opposed to needing to save up huge amounts to buy an apartment or a plot of land.”

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    Ismail disclosed that more than 15,000 people have signed up on Bloom’s waitlist. Bloom will begin to onboard them this month while touting its <$1 CPS marketing efforts. For now, users can only receive money; however, the company is working on letting them run outflows later when it builds up sufficient inflows and volumes to create liquidity.

    Bloom is Expanding Across Anglo East Africa

    Last Tuesday, Bloom announced that it is now part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 startup batch after receiving early admittance in July 2021. The company, which just launched this March from stealth, raised a pre-seed in September from Global Founders Capital, Goodwater Capital and some football players, including Blaise Matuidi.

    The Sudanese startup, based in Dubai, plans to expand across the Anglo East African region, including Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia, and funding from an upcoming seed round will help see to that. Fintechs offering comparable services, such as Fingo, another YC-backed business, and Koa and Finclusion, may create competition in some sectors. Competition might spur with fintech providing similar services in some of these markets, such as Fingo, another YC-backed company in Kenya, as well as Koa and Finclusion.

    “We are from the region. We understand the nuances in our markets and can navigate what may appear to be an ambiguous landscape. We are also comfortable — perhaps even thrive — working in markets that are volatile. We are underwiring the next decade of growth in Africa,” Bloom’s Cofounder Abdigani Diriye said of the investment.