Nigeria: Nigerian startup, Kippa, raises $8.4 million to expand offerings to Nigerian SMEs

Kippa, a Nigerian financial management and payments platform, announced Monday it has raised $8.4 million in a new financing round.

The round included participation from global investors, including Goodwater Capital, TEN13 VC, Rocketship VC, Saison Capital (the venture arm of Credit Saison), Crestone VC (led by Inanc Balci, Co-founder and former CEO at Lazada), VentureSouq, Horizon Partners and Vibe Capital.

Founded in June 2021 by Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph, Kippa provides digital business and financial management solutions to SMEs in Nigeria.

The startup said it has garnered backing from international investors to develop products that will help SMEs grow their businesses.

It said it raised pre-seed funding of $3.2 million in November 2021 with the idea of onboarding merchants to a simple-to-use mobile bookkeeping app to help them digitise bookkeeping and recover customer debt.

According to the startup, since the pre-seed announcement in November last year, it has made tremendous progress in recruiting ex-regulators and former senior executives at top startups, including OPay, BharatPe, Khatabook, TeamApt, OKCredit, NIBSS, and Unified Payments, among others.

Kippa said it has also obtained a licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to operate as a Super Agent under the Payment Solution Service licence category.

It said the licence allows it to leverage its explosive merchant distribution to turn everyday neighbourhood shops into a one-stop shop for essential financial services such as cash withdrawals and deposits, bank account opening, bills and utility payments, and insurance.

Speaking on the funding round in a statement, the CEO, Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph, said “We expect the number of digitally active small businesses to grow exponentially over the next three to five years. As more small businesses come online, Kippa will own the money button on the devices of these merchants.

“Our mission is to make it easy for anyone to start and run profitable small businesses in Africa. It is why we are building a full suite of software and financial services that enables this ambition, thereby empowering African business owners. We say this because we’ve spent time understanding their most significant needs.”