Tag: Funding

Klasha Nabs Additional $2.1M For Its Cross-border Commerce Play

Nigerian startup, Klasha, which provides multiple products for the cross-border commerce space in Africa, has received an additional $2.1 million to complete its $4.5 million seed round from a group of international investors, including Amex Ventures, the strategic investment group of American Express. This funding makes it Amex Ventures’ first investment in an African startup.

The round also included Global Ventures, the MENA-focused VC that has backed the likes of Tabby, Helium Health, and Paymob, joining investors from the first seed such as Greycroft, Seedcamp, Plug and Play, Berrywood Capital and Breega doubled down.

Getting To Know Klasha

Founded in 2019 by CEO Jessica Anuna, the startup solves payment issues faced by African merchants and consumers when paying for products online via different payment methods. Klasha is tapping into a vast e-commerce market in Africa’s cross-border space worth over $25 billion.

Klasha offers several business and consumer-facing products that are all linked through a single API. KlashaCheckout enables merchants outside of Africa to accept payments from six African nations — Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, and Kenya — and collect payments in G20 currencies such as dollars, pounds, and euros.

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Small businesses in these six nations can use KlashaWire to pay their suppliers in their currencies. These suppliers, according to the company, are paid in their dominant currency in three days. Merchants who don’t have physical stores to receive payments can share links with customers via email or social media using Payment Links.

Anuna claims that the company’s merchant acquisitions are up 20% month-on-month, and transaction volume is up 17.5%. They have completed over 210,000 transactions from over 1,700 merchants, which is 10x the number processed last October. Klasha earns money from sales commissions and subscriptions merchants pay to use the analytics platform.

Taking Klasha Beyond Borders

Last year, users in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya could create virtual cards, fund them with their local currencies, and send and receive money using Klasha’s consumer product. Anuna stated in an interview that the company would revamp its app to make it easier for retailers like ASOS, Zara, and H&M to accept payments from African consumers.

According to Anuna, “The core mission of Klasha is to streamline cross-border commerce from Africa to the rest of the world. And in turn, give the rest of the world access to African consumers on the ground who want and need these goods globally.”

“The biggest product development is this app allowing these consumers to shop from selected stores like Boohoo.com, pay using their Klasha wallet, which you can fund by multiple different African currencies and get delivered to their door,” he added.

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The app, named KlashaCart – which is only available in Nigeria – would allow consumers to shop from a variety of retailers using naira and have their purchases delivered within 7-14 days via Klasha’s logistics arm. According to Anuna, the platform will go live in Kenya in the coming months. Meanwhile, its customer base has increased to almost 45,000, a 4x growth from last October.

Despite Klasha’s tremendous growth, Sacha Haider, a partner at Global Ventures, believes the company has more room to grow. According to her, the “significant opportunity” to create a better experience for the more than 500 million digital shoppers expected on the continent by 2025, in an e-commerce market that accounts for up to 5% of Africa’s retail space, is highlighted by the business.

June 19, 2022
NFT Marketplace For Creatives, Ayoken Bags $1.4M To Help Users Grow Their Revenue

Ayoken, an NFT marketplace for creatives, has recently raised $1.4 million in pre-seed funding to help users diversify their revenue streams through selling digital collectibles.

Ayokenlabs, the startup’s marketplace, will showcase digital collectibles from musicians, sports brands, and influencers worldwide.

About Ayoken

Joshua King, the founder and CEO of Ayoken disclosed that the marketplace serves as a bridge between fans and artists, giving fans a sense of ownership in their idols’ success.

Fans will be able to access tokens such as behind-the-scenes videos and album art through the NFT marketplace, he said. NFT holders will also have access to other perks like unreleased songs and exclusive live events hosted by the creatives.

“Through VIP passes, fans will be able to listen to songs by these artists live-streamed before it is released on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Music.” Fans will also be eligible for discounts on future events,” said King, who has 14 years of experience in strategy, growth, innovation consulting, and entrepreneurship. He began his career by aiding in the scaling of AZA (Bitpesa), a Nairobi-based platform that uses bitcoin to facilitate cross-border remittances, and where he first learned about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

According to King, Ayoken will release NFTs of several big African artists and others worldwide in the coming months.

Incorporating Mobile Money To Ayoken For Ease of NFT

The London-based company has already teamed up with Ghanaian afrobeats musician KiDi (Dennis Nana Dwamena) for his first NFT release on June 1st. The cross-chain marketplace (which is currently built on the Avalanche blockchain) accepts crypto and card payments, according to King, but plans to incorporate mobile money as the business aims to make it easier for people in emerging markets like Africa to trade. To make this a reality, King said they are in talks with several telcos on the continent.

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“We are reducing friction points for the users by letting people use their cards instead of using crypto to buy; we are working on partnerships with telcos that will allow people to use mobile money to make the payment in the future. Nothing comes close to what we are doing, and that is why we are able to sign some of the biggest names in the creative industry,” he said.

When users buy NFTs or refer others, they will receive token (Ayo) rewards, which they can later redeem for NFTs.

Unlike other NFT marketplaces, King added, they have distribution partners who promote NFT drops, including YouTubers, influencers, newsletters, crypto exchanges, and telcos, allowing the creatives to reach a wider audience than simply their fans.

“What this means is that celebrities do not have to rely on their social media following to drive transactions. They get instant access to millions of people worldwide at the touch of a button. And our approach is so different from any other NFC marketplace on the planet. We also have a marketing agency to help these creatives succeed in their first NFT drops,” said King.

“They (distribution partners) will get a revenue share based on any transactions generated on their social media promotions.”

Ayoken plans to sign a number of exclusive deals with artists and partnerships with telcos, as well as grow its team and secondary marketplaces, with the funds raised from investors such as Founders Factory Africa, Texas-based Kon Ventures, Europe-based venture capital collective Crypto League, Ghana-based R9C Ventures, and Maximus Ventures.

“The bulk of the funding will go toward securing exclusive licensing and expanding our tech team, which will quadruple the number of developers and engineers,” he stated.

June 12, 2022
FoondaMate Raises $2M in Seed Funding

In a round led by LocalGlobe, a U.K.-based venture capital firm, FoondaMate, a South African edtech startup, secured $2 million in seed funding to drive global adoption of its WhatsApp and Facebook-based learning chatbot.

What To Know About FoondaMate

FoondaMate helps students with their revision by providing instant answers to questions and access to revision papers, as well as providing guidance on how to respond to questions.

Dacod Magagula, who co-founded FoondaMate with Tao Boyle, revealed that the startup is aimed at high-school students in emerging regions where WhatsApp is extensively used, and connectivity is much cheaper or free. He claims that the company’s learning chatbot is easy to use, affordable, and provides an organized alternative to using search engines for studying. Educators can also use FoondaMate’s integrated resources to assign and distribute homework, as well as share other educational content with students.

Magagula said he began working on FoondaMate in August 2020, when WhatsApp released a beta version of its API to allow businesses to connect with customers.

“It (WhatsApp) was in beta at the time, and I started playing around with it… I thought it’d be a perfect way to enable access to study materials to students in the same position as myself…because a majority of students do not have access to the wider internet but have access to WhatsApp. Also, many network providers offer WhatsApp for free to attract users to their network,” said Magagula.

Before teaming up with Boyle, Magagula was trying to fix the supply chain to get textbooks to underserved schools. He had additional experience from his high-school days that made him see the idea’s feasibility.

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“During the final year of high school in South Africa, I used the computer my brother and I had bought using our savings for studies and downloading all revision materials I could get my hands on. I had a huge database of past papers, but no way of sharing it with my friends, and printing them was expensive,” he added.

Furthermore, he explained that “the materials played a big role in my success in school as I graduated top of my class and my performance was the best in the school’s history (at that time). And so FoondaMate was created to make these resources easily accessible to students,” said Magagula, who studied Computer Science at the University of Capetown. After teaming up with Boyle, they added more functionalities and integrated it with additional services.

FoondaMate Rapid Growth

FoondaMate has been used by more than 400,000 students in more than 30 countries since its launch, including Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia, where the startup recently launched and has witnessed a spike in usage.

Magagula stated that the company is now focusing on localizing its learning materials in order to accommodate learners from more nations and accelerate the platform’s growth to more than 50 million users. This recent funding round has provided the resources required for its rapid growth.

“Initially, I thought FoondaMate would be used by students who do not have Wi-Fi and those with limited access to the internet. But the reality is, it is being used by those with good internet connectivity too…because it’s an easy and intuitive way to access study material,” he remarked.

To keep the children safe on the platform, the startup has a team that vets where the bot gets its information and monitors the results.

Emerge Education, Odunayo Eweniyi via FirstCheckAfrica, Iyin Aboyeji via Future Africa, LoftyInc, and angels from Luno (Marcus Swanepoel) and Justworks took part in the round (Isaac Oates). They joined the XX accelerator, which was the startup’s first backer.

LocalGlobe Partner Ziv Reichert commented that – “FoondaMate’s viral growth strongly reflects how well the product resonates with learners and speaks volumes to Dacod and Tao’s deep understanding of their users’ needs.”

“Having initially launched with a mission to transform how students across Africa study, FoondaMate has evolved into a tool that is now used and loved by learners from a range of backgrounds, with varying needs and learning styles, from all across the world. We believe that it takes immense empathy for a problem and a realistic long-term view to build a product of this kind,” he emphasized.

June 6, 2022
Egypt’s Mylerz Raises $9.6M For Africa-Wide Growth

Cairo-based e-commerce fulfillment startup, Mylerz eye three new markets in North Africa and looks to expand across Egypt over the next three months against the backdrop of the $9.6 million funding it has just secured.

The startup is also targeting the booming e-commerce market in East Africa with the long-term objective of becoming a pan-African shipping logistics provider — by leveraging the continent’s e-commerce market, which has grown at an 18% annual rate since 2014.

About Mylerz

Samer Gharaibeh founded Mylerz in November 2019, borrowing from his experience at Aramex, a UAE-based multinational logistics and fulfillment company, where he worked for 23 years, with his last role being head of Africa.

“Because of my experience at Aramex, I understand the regulations of different countries in Africa and know the right kind of partnerships to have to be successful. I’m using this knowledge and experience to make Mylerz the preferred pan-African logistics provider and e-commerce partner,” said Gharaibeh.

Read Also : Egypt’s Paymob Bags $50M Led By Paypay Ventures

Mylerz platform enables its partners to follow orders in transit, adjust delivery destinations or times, and generate business data such as consumer behavior and demographics.

The startup says it does same-day delivery for hundreds of its partners.

Gharaibeh revealed that Mylerz has 21 fulfillment centers and plans to open a 25,000 sq. meter hub, its biggest so far, to keep up with the growing demand for storage, order processing, and last-mile deliveries.

The fulfillment hubs, Gharaibeh said, are spread out to ensure that they are in close proximity to customers for faster deliveries. To date, Mylerz has delivered 2 million packages.

“We operate a decentralized system, and these hubs, which are close to our customers, help us to consolidate the packages and dispatch for deliveries fast enough to meet our promise of same-day delivery,” he said.

Mylerz also operates a fleet of over 350 eco-friendly vehicles powered by compressed natural gas (CNG). The initial cost of these vehicles is higher when compared to conventional ones, but their lower fuel demand offsets this.

Growing Logistics Platform With Partners

Lorax Capital Partners, an Egypt-based private equity firm, led the Mylerz growth funding round, which also included Fawry, one of Egypt’s largest e-payment companies. Fawry, Mylerz’s payments partner, will join the company as it grows into Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, providing electronic payment and cash collection services.

“Our immediate plan is expanding across Egypt, opening new markets, and facilitating cross-border trade for our customers. We have the right partners to make this happen and grow our end-to-end logistics platform,” says Gharaibeh.

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“Fawry’s over 250,000 agents will help us deposit cash collected from buyers since cash on delivery is still the preferred payment method in Egypt. This will make our business less risky, and the reduced risk means that we can grow much faster,” he added.

Ashraf Sabry, CEO of Fawry, said the investment in Mylerz is part of its strategy “to build an integrated commerce ecosystem in Egypt and explore international expansion opportunities with strong partners like Mylerz and Lorax.”

May 16, 2022
EGYPT’S PAYMOB BAGS $50M LED BY PAYPAL VENTURES

Egyptian fintech Paymob, which enables merchants to accept digital payments online and in-store, recently raised $50 million in Series B funding led by PayPal Ventures, the global corporate venture arm of PayPal, New-York-based venture capital Kora Capital, and London-based Clay Point.

Other participating investors include Helios Digital Ventures, British International Investment (formerly the CDC Group), and Nclude, the venture fund launched by Global Ventures and three Egyptian banks. Existing investors from its $18.5 million Series A last April — A15, FMO, and Global Ventures — doubled down.

Helping Merchants Grow With Paymob

Paymob works with businesses and merchants of all sizes. Its omnichannel payment infrastructure allows them to accept payments via various methods, which CEO Islam Shawky claims to be the largest in Egypt. These different options include bank cards, mobile wallets, QR payments, bank cards’ installments, BNPL, and consumer finance payment options. Paymob also has a POS solution for offline merchants where they can receive in-store card payments.

Islam Shawky, who founded the Cairo-based fintech in 2015 with Alain El Hajj and Mostafa Menessy, explained that their mission is to help merchants grow —

“So together we offer merchants, whether an SME or an international brand, the ability to accept all those payment methods and thus, increasing the probability and enhancing the probability for them to purchase and hopefully grow the revenue.”

Read Also : Egypt’s Mylerz Raises $9.6M For Africa-Wide Growth

Paymob’s payment gateways, such as Swvl, LG, Breadfast, and Homzmart, were used by over 35,000 local and international merchants last year. The number of merchants, which currently includes Vodafone, LG, Virgin, Chalhoub Group, and Decathlon, has more than tripled to over 100,000. Paymob hopes to reach a million SMEs in the next few years, according to Shawky.

Given Egypt’s 3 million SMEs, this is a bold prediction. Paymob’s strategy to attain that number is strengthened by launching a new product in partnership with Mastercard: Tap-on-phone contactless payments.

Crushing Competitors With New Tap-On-Phone Product

Obtaining a point-of-sale machine and supporting hardware can be too expensive for micro and small businesses. It makes it difficult for them to expand because they will need to process enormous volumes over a long period to repay that cost.

The Tap-on-phone product leverages contactless payments technology so that these merchants can turn their NFC-enabled smartphones — personal or commercial — into a POS by downloading a Paymob-powered app.

“For us, this is a game-changer for face-to-face transactions because this opens the market up for us and helps us grow tremendously,” said the CEO. He also stated that the product, which will be rolled out to new merchants as a supplement to traditional point-of-sale devices, will allow Paymob to stay ahead of competitors like Fawry and PayTabs. CinetPay, Ozow, and Flutterwave are similar companies in other African regions.

Paymob’s extensive product suite is what attracted co-lead investor Kora Management. According to Nitin Saigal, the firm’s founder, Paymob is “innovating at scale in the offline merchant acquiring and online payment gateway space as Egypt and the Middle East transition from being primarily cash-led to a heavy digital mode of transacting.” Its other plans for merchants include introducing a new checkout platform and the launch of cards to enable B2B transactions.

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Various fintechs in Egypt, including Paymob, have praised the apex bank’s (the Central Bank of Egypt) financial inclusion activities since last year. Shawky claims that these initiatives, which include the issuing of over 20 million Meeza cards and 25 million wallets, as well as granting companies licenses to distribute and operate POS devices, are some of the reasons for Paymob’s rapid growth.

Paymob Growth So Far

In 2020, Paymob reported a total payment volume of $5 billion; it’s unclear what that figure is today. However, according to the metrics shared by the company, monthly volumes increased 4x year over year as of December 2021. Paymob had completed over 120 million transactions as of 2020, according to its website.

Paymob’s entrance into Pakistan could accelerate its growth by the end of the year. According to a release, the Egyptian fintech hopes to add 100,000 merchants from the South Asian country, which has over 4 million SMEs, in the next two years.

Paymob boasts of serving merchants in other countries, such as Kenya and Palestine. However, it has yet to open a branch in these regions. Instead, the company focuses on select GCC and North African markets, where this growth funding will offer the necessary strength to debut. Paymob will also increase its market share in Egypt and expand its product suite to include expense management software and working capital.

“Paymob shares our mission and ambition of advancing digital payments adoption — it has made impressive strides in supporting the growth and success of underserved SMBs,” said Ashish Aggarwal, the director at co-lead investor PayPal Ventures in a statement.

This can be considered PayPal’s first MENA investment and seems to be the CVC firm’s second in Africa after South African open finance startup Stitch.

This funding round is one of the largest at this stage in Egypt and MENA, bringing Paymob’s total funding to over $68.5 million.

May 16, 2022
IdentityPass: Nigeria’s Identity Verification Startup, Raises $2.8M Seed

Identitypass, a Lagos-based identity verification API, has received $2.8 million in seed funding months after graduating from Y Combinator. The round also comes a few months after the startup raised $360,000 in pre-seed investment last November, bringing its total funding to $3.1 million.

IdentityPass and Its Quest Towards Solving Fraud And Identity Issues in Africa

As more individuals gain access to the internet for the first time, mobile penetration in Africa rises to around 46%. As a result, the market opportunity for startups, particularly fintechs and e-commerce, has expanded as they aim to develop various solutions to suit the general public’s financial needs.

However, the report says African businesses lose $4 billion annually to cybercrime. The global figure for this occurrence stands at $1 trillion. Thus, the need for fintechs and digital businesses in Africa to perform stringent KYC and verification checks on their customers.

Identitypass has risen to the challenge of solving fraud and identity issues in Africa, seeing growing demand from that segment. At first, it wasn’t the love for reducing the high fraud rates that birth the company.

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According to co-founder and CEO Lanre Ogungbe, the team was initially building a platform that required consumers to use biometrics (face, fingerprints, or voice) and cards to make payments. But while developing the platform, they encountered issues performing verification checks. Hence, the decision to pivot.

“At the point of when we’re building the payments solution, there was no one in the market that had the kind of infrastructure that we wanted to use. We wanted to build a substitute for authentication. That was it,” said Ogungbe.

After witnessing a rise in demand for fraud and identity challenges, the team reached out to fintechs to inquire about their solutions. The overall feedback, according to Ogungbe, was a system involving an in-house compliance team and transaction thresholds. To make transactions exceeding the entry for the latter, customers would have to pass further investigative checks.

Meanwhile, some of these fintechs did not precisely have excellent KYC processes because customers only had to fill in very few data points at their onboarding stages. “We knew it would never work for us,” said Ogungbe, who founded the company with Niyi Adegboye, Ebuka Obi, and Tolu Adetuyi last year. “Today, we have basic authentication using OTPs or a four-pin password, but by starting Identitypass, we wanted to introduce more authentication options into the market.”

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Following that, Identitypass sought numerous agencies and authorities around the country to obtain the licenses and certificates required to authorize checks at a wide range of verification points. In January 2020, it began with just one data point. However, 200 active firms in fintech, e-commerce, education, and mobility already connect to 18 data points on the platform to authenticate their consumers’ identities. These companies are based in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Kenya, the United States, and India.

“The core of our business is making it possible for digital businesses in Africa to easily verify and validate that their customers are who they say they are,” the chief executive said.

“Before we came into the market, someone could pick another person’s BVN and use that to assess a loan facility,” said the founder explaining why Identitypass takes a lot of data points into cognizance. “But with technologies like ours, we can do this kind of verification to tell that the person submitting the BVN, phone number, or bank details aren’t the owner.”

Leading The Market

Since its inception, Identitypass has completed over 1 million unique verifications. National IDs, driver licenses, international passports, bank verification numbers (BVN), phone numbers, vehicle plate numbers, debit cards, security watchlists, and tax history are examples of government-approved IDs. The identity and verification platform charges between 10 and 20 cents for each verification, depending on the number of endpoints a company connects to.

In addition to its APIs, the two-year-old startup just released a SaaS platform. Identitypass, according to Ogungbe, has an advantage over similar participants in the industry, such as fellow YC-batchmate Dojah and veteran firm Smile Identity, because its new product is the software rather than a plug-and-play solution.

“That makes us different from anyone in the market because today, we’re the only providers of both an API and a SaaS-based solution for verification. To add, we have more data points than most providers in the region. And the way we use data and biometrics for verification, no other player in the market uses it that way.”

This belief in its ability to be a “market leader” propels the corporation into uncharted territory: international sales. In an interview, the CEO mentioned an incident last month when US-based Mercury banned the accounts of a few African businesses owing to compliance issues. He believes Identitypass can prevent future occurrences by bringing on companies of Mercury’s stature to conduct background checks on African individuals and companies.

May 16, 2022
EDTECH STARTUP MANARA RAISES $3M TO GROW TECH TALENT POOL IN MENA

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) focused EdTech startup Manara announced raising $3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by payment giant Stripe to grow the tech talent pool in the MENA region.

More on Manara

Manara was founded in 2021 by Iliana Montauk and Laila Abudahi to unlock the human potential of the Middle East and North Africa. It uses a digital platform to provide a cohort-based training program for computer science students and software engineers, connecting them to big tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. The platform connects MENA engineers with a community of world-class tech professionals who provide mentorship and network to help them secure top tech jobs.

Manara poises itself as a social impact EdTech startup offering training to anyone that qualifies for the program. While its students do not pay any tuition fee for the program, they are required to commit 10% of their salary in their first two years of employment to the company.

Relating the need for a platform like Manara with her experience, Laila Abudahi, Co-founder & CTO of Manara, said, “I grew up in Palestine and realized quickly that to become a world-class engineer, I needed to work on highly scaled products with experienced teams. After I reached my dream through lots of trial and error, I wanted to make it easier for people back home to do the same. Ultimately, these engineers will become the CTOs and senior developers that the region needs in order to accelerate the growing success of its tech ecosystem.”

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The startup claims 86% of its trained engineers receive job offers within five months of graduating, and those who already have a job get up to a 300% pay hike after the training.

With the new funding, Manara plans to scale its existing cohort-based solution from 60 engineers to 6,000 engineers per year. The startup also plans to launch a self-service product for interview practice, networking, and mentorship, targeting software engineers from across the globe.

Participant of the pre-seed round includes LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman; Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator; Eric Ries, founder of Lean Startup; and Mudassir Sheikha, founder and CEO of Careem.

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Iliana Montauk, Co-founder and CEO of Manara, talked about the funding and the excellent caliber of investors it has attracted, “We received more appetite from investors than we could accommodate, signaling an increasing interest from Silicon Valley in platforms that facilitate online and offline communities, and solutions to access highly skilled talent from emerging markets.”

What They Are Saying

Carlos Espinal, the Managing Partner at Seedcamp, said,

“Europe’s tech sector is growing quickly. There’s a massive need for new solutions to access talent, whether remote or onsite. The Middle East and North Africa is an obvious fit because of their proximity and time zones. We’re very excited to back the first startup bridging these two markets — and are particularly enthusiastic about the founders’ commitment to women engineers.

May 16, 2022
COINBASE VENTURES AND FXT LEAD A $23M SEED ROUND FOR MARA TO DEVELOP AFRICA’S PORTAL TO THE CRYPTO ECONOMY

MARA, a Pan-African crypto platform, announced completing a seed round of $23 million in equity and token sale from a pool of investors. They include high-profile crypto and web3 investors such as Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research (FTX), and Distributed Global.

Other VCs in the round include TQ Ventures, DIGITAL, Nexo, Huobi Ventures, Day One Ventures, Infinite Capital, and DAO Jones (investment DAO backed by Mike Shinoda, Steve Aoki, and Disclosure), while about 100 other crypto investors also participated.

Developing Products To Serve Diverse Crypto Finance Needs

Sub-Saharan Africa is the third-fastest growing cryptocurrency economy as data from blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis says the region’s crypto usage grew 1,200% in 2021.

However, despite the proliferation of local and international crypto exchanges, as well as the introduction of unique models by up-and-coming web3 platforms, some observers believe that there are still significant impediments to crypto adoption in Africa.

As a result of this introspection, startups like MARA have emerged with the goal of “increasing the number of Africans who can engage in the crypto economy.”

MARA says it is developing a suite of products for the African market to serve diverse crypto-finance needs. Its main product is a crypto-brokerage app for consumers that allows them to buy, send, sell, and withdraw fiat and crypto-assets. The company plans to launch in Kenya and Nigeria, where it is located, in July of this year.

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Though MARA maintains that consumers don’t need any prior crypto knowledge to use this retail app, local options like VALR and Yellow Card, which are supported by Coinbase Ventures, are abounding in Africa. However, the web3 upstart’s subsequent products may make it stand out.

In Q4 this year, it will launch the MARA Chain, a layer-1 blockchain and Alchemy-Esque platform powered by the native MARA token for developers to build decentralized applications — also known as dApps — in Africa. Then sometime in Q1 2023, MARA intends to launch a pro-exchange for sophisticated traders that utilize technical analysis and prefer a full set of trading options to the traditional exchange options on MARA’s retail app.

Explaining MARA’s unique selling proposition, co-founder and CEO Chi Nnadi says, “We’re creating financial infrastructure for people to build their lives. And so it’s more than just being able to buy crypto; it’s about African engineers creating their [own] projects. We want to be the source for incubating talent; we want to give them the platform through our exchange to launch their projects.”

Nandi founded the company in April 2021 with an executive team that includes Llinás Múnera, Dearg OBartuin, Kate Kallot, and board advisors Kojo Annan and Tatiana Koffman. They are former executives from Amazon, PayPal, Uber, Nvidia, Founders Bank, and Rappi.

Bringing About Mara

Before MARA, Nnadi was the executive director of Sustainability International, a nonprofit that handled community-led solutions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. While commuting between Nigeria (his home country) and the United States, he became aware of the sociological and financial issues that Africans in remote areas face, as well as notions about how bitcoin and blockchain technology could help.

“Instead of understanding blockchain technology specifically for its utility within the African context, there’s an opportunity to use it as a foundational trade technology to make sure capital got to people’s hands and last mile.”

Read Also : EDTECH Startup Manara Raises $3M To Grow Tech Talent Pool In MENA

The Sustainability International team worked on a project with Consensys, which birthed the design of Sela Technologies. It was a platform that enabled direct payments and distributed accountability — via smart contracts — to stakeholders in a development project.

“We were involved in really bringing blockchain technology to the woman in the market and the last mile. And so it was working on that that I started to realize we needed wallets, exchange, and core infrastructure for crypto in Africa,” Nnadi revealed, describing what led to the formation of his web3 startup, MARA.

A few web3 and decentralized platforms, such as Nestcoin (funded by Alameda Research) and Jambo (backed by Coinbase Ventures), have made their way into Africa over the past year, promising to onboard millions of users into a new economy while also benefiting them. Although their combined impact is yet to be noticed, this may change with time.

Mara Poise For Immediate Impact

MARA, on the other hand, seeks to have an immediate impact. The startup revealed in a statement that it had formed a partnership with the Central African Republic (CAR), which was the first country in Africa to legalize bitcoin as legal tender and is only second in the world to El Salvador to become its official crypto partner and a crypto advisor to the president.

“We’re there to advise the president on improving their technology infrastructure so that they can bring on widespread crypto adoption. So that means advising them to expand internet access and mobile phone adoption and working in an advisory capacity since they’re the first African country to adopt bitcoin.”

While there is widespread grassroots cryptocurrency adoption in most parts of Africa, Nnadi claims it occurs without oversight. MARA intends to educate governments and support KYC and AML best practices as a “legalized exchange.” The partnership with CAR makes one of the first steps the web3 platform will take a reality — assisting the government in establishing a national ID campaign and then implementing KYC/AML standards in tandem with crypto education and financial literacy.

“The government is working through multi-year multi-step processes that will allow them to address infrastructure issues. And then, once those infrastructure challenges have been addressed, it’ll be quite easy for folks to use the Mara wallet,” Nnadi remarked.

Nnadi says his startup intends to engage more African governments — including those with an anti-crypto stance like Nigeria and Kenya — to see the benefits of blockchain and offer a hand in drafting licensing regimes for crypto companies to operate in their countries.

It’s unclear how MARA plans to reason with these governments, whose reputation for toughness precedes them; yet, only time will tell what results from such dialogues. For the time being, the year-old company will be basking in what is perhaps the most significant financing for an African crypto/web3 startup at this level.

May 16, 2022
Nigeria’s Hello Tractor Raises $1M for PAYG Tractor Leasing

Hello Tractor, a Nigerian tractor-booking website, has received a $1 million funding round led by Heifer International. The funding aims to provide loans for tractor purchases that may be repaid with revenue generated from leasing the tractors to local farmers.

Farmers and tractor owners can book connected tractors using Hello Tractor’s tracking device and software, newly rolled out. Farmers now have access to a previously unavailable essential service, while fleet owners see a fleet optimisation opportunity that reduces fuel theft and fraud. Over 500,000 small farmers in Africa are currently being served, with over 3,000 tractors and combined owners.

How They Intend To Deploy The New Funding

According to Hello Tractor, the new $1 million funding by Heifer International, which supports farmers and local food producers to strengthen local economies and build secure livelihoods that provide a living income, according to Hello Tractor, will be used to fund the new “Pay-As-You-Go” (PAYG) Tractor Financing programme. The programme will increase Agricultural Productivity in Nigeria, which has already enabled tractor purchases in the Nigerian states of Nasarrawa, Abuja, and Enugu.

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“We developed the PAYG programme to make tractor ownership – and the reliable income these machines can bring – a reality for entrepreneurs who find it impossible to get credit through normal channels. We look at the revenue tractor owners can generate, not how much collateral they can pledge,” says Jehiel Oliver, founder, and CEO of Hello Tractor.

Partnering with Heifer “allows us to extend innovative financing to people who were previously deemed ‘unbankable,’ while also providing access to technology that has the potential to increase the incomes of millions of smallholder farmers across Africa,” according to Oliver.

The PAYG model, according to Adesuwa Ifedi, senior vice president of Heifer International’s Africa Programs, provided finance for entrepreneurs who wanted to generate jobs by capitalising on the need for tractor services on African farms but lacked traditional forms of collateral.

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“It’s a way to unlock capital for youth who have strong business skills that can help transform African agriculture but are often overlooked by private equity investors,” Ifedi said.

About Hello Tractor

Founded in 2014, Hello Tractor is an ag-tech social enterprise that focuses on connecting tractor owners and smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa through farm equipment sharing applications. The company has, over the years, emerged as the leading provider of technology solutions designed for the tractor services market, capturing 75% of private commercial tractor inflows to Nigeria, expanding to a total of 16 markets across the continent as well as reaching well over 500,000 smallholder farmers.

Hello Tractor brings tractor owners together with farmers in need of those tools. Think of it as the Uber of tractors but with an IoT (Internet of Things) spin. The company digitises a traditionally tech-averse space and offers fleet owners intel about fuel use, maintenance, and more on each of the tractors rented through its system.

May 9, 2022
Senegalese B2B Marketplace Kwely Pushes for Made-in-Africa Products with $1M Seed

Senegal-based B2B Marketplace Kwely has recently concluded a $1 million seed funding round with a fresh $700,000 capital injection led by WIC Capital with participation from Loftyinc Capital, Afropreneur Angels, Haskè Ventures, and other angel investors. In July 2021, Kwely had raised $250,000 seed with Lead investor DNA Capital and UMA Ventures coupled with the new investment, bringing its total funding to $1 million.

Developing Export-Ready Made in Africa Products

E-commerce is predicted to boost Africa’s economic growth by creating opportunities for small and large businesses and promoting market integration. B2B marketplaces with transactional capacity or value-added services are uncommon in Africa, although the sector is developing as new startups emerge.

African enterprises widely use B2B marketplaces. Startups do not only create these inventions but they are also refined to fulfill client needs.

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Kwely has teamed with these businesses to co-develop export-ready Made in Africa products and brands that match international quality requirements.

The firm will be able to offer filling and packaging solutions that suit the standard of quality and compliance with international practices, such as those established by the US Food and Drug Administration, other global Consumer Packaged Goods standardization agencies, and certification bodies for the food and pharmaceutical industries, thanks to the opening of its international packaging studio standards.

Redefining African Products Perception with $1M Seed

According to the startup, the funding will support Kwely’s marketing and distribution of more than 200 SKUs it represents exclusively, including its B2B wholesale digital platform for “Made-in-Africa” products and the implementation and launch of its packaging services facility.

“Our goal is to be the leading African B2B e-commerce platform that redefines the perception of African products and how African buyers and sellers transact with each other and the rest of the world. Kwely is working to connect the dots between local African producers, global consumers and international buyers,” said Birame Sock, Kwely founder and CEO.

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Kwely works with countries across Africa from brand development to packaging to ensure their products are ready to be exported.

“We have seen the impact Alibaba has had on the informal industrial sector in China and believe that there is an opportunity in economies that are still driven by small businesses operating at the artisan level to make Africa a major sourcing destination for international buyers,” says Birame.

About Kwely Inc.

Founded in 2020 by Birame Sock, a tech entrepreneur who successfully exited two startups in the US, Kwely was launched under the premise that “Made In Africa” products have a place on the global market and can help boost African exports, as well as the continent’s industrial sector.

The startup focuses on developing existing and new brands with local suppliers to get to export-ready status, a proprietary platform to support B2B wholesale transactions on the global market, and a packaging studio to provide the services needed to deliver products that meet.

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Kwely has developed a minimum viable product (MVP) for its technology platform and authenticated over 200 products made in the country. Its distribution platform aims to get high-quality Made in Africa products onto the shelves and counters of major international retailers, hotels, airports, specialty stores, and restaurants.

May 9, 2022