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Credit agency startup, Indicina has raised $3 million to drive its African expansion plans. The company, which currently operates in Nigeria and Kenya says it will also use the fund to build more products for consumer credit recommendations and bolster its infrastructure.
Berlin-headquartered and pan-European venture capital firm, Target Global led the round, adding to its long list of investments in Nigerian startups, including Kuda, Kippa, and Edukoya. The firm’s partner, Ricardo Schäefer will join Indicina’s board. Greycroft also participated in this round, as well as RV Ventures.
The investors hinged their interest in Indicina on its unique approach to solving Africa’s credit problem. The company uses data to solve the loan eligibility problem previously decided by incomplete creditworthiness assessments.
Co-founder and CEO of Indicina, Yvonne Johnson, said the platform now has over 120 customers, including banks, non-bank lenders and fintech. Some include Polaris Bank, LipaLater, VFD, Zilla, and CreditDirect.
What they are saying
- While stressing the importance of using the funding to get to the next iteration of the company’s machine learning and data play, Johnson said: “We have been working with the lenders; now we want to involve consumers. So, they see what the lender would see if they are going to apply for a loan”.
- She added that the funding would allow Indiana to deepen product development in that area as it hires more data scientists and machine learning engineers.
- “We’ve never had any balance sheet. It’s never been about offering credit for us. We want to focus on the infrastructure layer and provide good infrastructure for people to feel more comfortable. We want lenders to be better informed about the decisions around credit so they can go to market faster with their digital products. So, we’ve never had a business model that included our balance sheet, which we’ve always worked with the lenders,” she said.
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