Why Itanna Invested $150,000 in Indicina Technologies

Itanna, the venture capital arm of Honeywell Group, announced its participation in Indicina Technologies’ most recent round of seed funding, investing $150,000 in the fintech start-up.

The new financing will accelerate the start-up’s continued expansion within Nigeria, as well as support further development of their proprietary technology platform and their pursuit of expansion opportunities in other African markets.

Indicina’s flagship product, Originate, is an innovative full-stack lending-as-a-service platform utilising machine learning to drive a digitally led consumer finance strategy.

In very simple terms, Indicina has created a software that allows anybody who has enough capital to start a loan business to commence the business with technology that is similar to that of a bank in terms of loan management. For this service they would charge a monthly fee and save the business the initial cost and associated risk of building a loan management system from the scratch.

Is the market size large enough? Potentially YES. Nigeria could as well be in a position of unexampled amount of loan offerings from several loan companies as seen in Kenya and Ethiopia. Loan products are so ubiquitous in Kenya, that the regulator had to create a special regulation for start up credit companies.

It is therefore a unique business case for Itanna to support a company creating the platform that the loan companies would use to manage their loans effectively and efficiently.

Nigeria In Focus:

• Population – 206.6 million (Compared to South Africa’s 59.6 million)
• GDP: $504.57 billion (Compared to South Africa’s $369.85 billion)
• GDP Per Capita: $2,465 (Compared to South Africa’s $6,193)