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Duplo, a Lagos-based fintech, tackling the payments inefficiencies in the FMCG sector, has raised $1.3 million to expand its offering in digitizing payment flows for B2B companies.
Duplo will utilise most of the fund for the improvement of its product, tech and sales as well as move into other sectors aside from FMCG retail, to businesses in travel, farming, B2B marketplaces, alcohol and beverages.
Yele Oyekola, a former product lead at Carbon, started Duplo based on his experience as an economic policy officer for the UN in Africa, where touring different countries opened his eyes to how people and businesses were heavily reliant on cash.
With Duplo, distributors can create unique virtual accounts for retailers and agents to make real-time payments or bank transfers, while the platform helps to reconcile their books automatically.
Duplo charges a 1% fee for every transaction performed on its platform. And depending on their size, businesses also pay between ₦100 (~$0.20) to ₦1,000 (~$2.00) to create virtual accounts.
Besides providing tools that enable B2B companies to digitize their payment flows, there’s a no-code tool for them to optimize trade with their business customers, vendors and suppliers. The platform also helps these companies to generate or pay invoices, offer credit to their business customers and a dashboard to attribute payment flows to a particular customer, retailer or location.
The company, which launched its pilot three months ago, affirms that customers reported cost savings of more than 12% within that period. Duplo has also grown 60% month-month to serve 20+ enterprise businesses. Currently, it has processed over $380,000; however, Duplo has plans to reach $40 million in annualised TPV by the end of Q2.
Last November, Duplo got into Y Combinator and is taking part in the accelerator’s current winter batch. The YC-backed startup has also raised a $1.3 million pre-seed round led by early-stage pan-African VC firm Oui Capital to further its growth. A mix of local and international investors such as MyAsia VC, Y Combinator, Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola and Mono CEO, Abdul Hassan participated.
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