Nigerian financial management and payment platform, Kippa, has announced that it has raised $8.4 million in a new financing round, bringing its total raised funds to $11 million.
Announced officially by the company on Monday, the round included participation from a new set of 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, Duke Ekezie, and Jephthah Uche, Kippa provides digital business and financial management solutions to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria. It helps small businesses with important business management tools such as funds tracking, bookkeeping, and inventory management.
In November 2021, just five months after its launch, Kippa raised pre-seed funding of $3.2 million from a series of global investors.
Kippa has grown tremendously since the pre-seed funding in November, which was aimed at onboarding target merchants to their bookkeeping app. The company now offers SMEs a wider range of features, and according to the startup, they have experienced a magnificent level of progress in recruiting ex-regulators and former senior executives at top startups, including OPay, BharatPe, Khatabook, TeamApt, OKCredit, NIBSS, and Unified Payments, amongst others.
CEO Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph commented on the founding round in an official statement and stated that the company aims to capitalize on the projected growth in the number of digitally active SMEs over the next three to five years.
“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,” he said.
This development comes a few days after Kippa announced that it has joined companies like OPay and TeamApt in obtaining a license from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to operate as a Super Agent under the Payment Solution Service license category.
The license ensures that merchants on the Kippa platform can act as agents and offer financial services such as cash withdrawals and deposits, opening of bank accounts, payments of bills, and insurance to individual customers who come to their small shops regularly to make everyday purchases.
