Investor Updates: March 9 2022 - Nigerian digital bank Yep! raises $1.5m pre-seed

Nigerian digital bank Yep! raises $1.5m pre-seed

Highlights

• Yep!, a Nigerian “financial super app” with payments, remittance, and banking features, has raised $1.5 million in a pre-seed round led by pan-African VC Greenhouse Capital.
• The startup plans to go live across the five markets where E-Settlement, its parent company, is present, serving digital financial services to consumers, small business owners, and merchants.
• It will provide account opening, debit card issuance, bill payments, credit financing services to online consumers, and financial management services to both consumers and businesses.

Source: TechCrunch

Our Takeaway

Over the past few years, new fintechs trying to take on legacy banks in Nigeria, and Africa at large, have sprung up as the digital banking wave takes shape. But two things make Yep! Interesting. Firstly, its business model of serving both individuals and businesses via a single platform is unique as other neobanks either offer tailored services to individuals or cater to varying sizes of businesses. Also, the startup is using a combined offline and online acquisition strategy, similar to OPay.

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OkHi closes $1.5m seed extension round to accelerate operations

Highlights

• Smart addressing verification company, OkHi, has raised a $1.5 million seed extension to accelerate its goal to tackle challenges in the sector. 
• The capital raised will enable OkHi to expand its team currently operating remotely across Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, and London, with extensive employment in sales, products, and engineering departments to drive consumer and B2B growth.
• The round, which brings the total seed raised by OkHi since inception to $3 million, included investors such as Chapel Hill Denham, Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, Flutterwave’s founder and other executives as well as EXFI, a syndicate of ex-Googlers.

Source: TechCrunch

Our Takeaway

OkHi’s digital infrastructure makes it possible for users, individuals, and businesses, to adequately verify the addresses of customers and services through smartphones. The service is particularly targeted at banks and fintech companies as it’s useful for KYC compliance but outside the financial services landscape, the smart address verification has use cases in industries such as last-mile delivery, e-commerce, food delivery, and emergency services.

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Sudan’s first YC-backed startup is a dollar savings app

Highlights

• Bloom is a fintech firm attempting to help Sudanese individuals hedge against rising devaluation in the north African country and is the country’s first to be backed by renowned accelerator Y Combinator.
• The platform offers a “high-yield” savings account, free FX, and adjacent digital banking services so customers can save in a stable currency, the dollar, and spend as they go in local currencies.
• Bloom works with the Export Development Bank, a partner lender that handles deposits, as a technology, customer acquisition, user experience, and marketing partner to the bank.

Source: TechCrunch

Our Takeaway

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has a population of 370 million, 62% of which have smartphones, 50% aged between 14-45 years old, and amasses $500 billion in annual savings. Platforms like Bloom and Egypt-based Thndr tap into this market to help their population protect wealth from their respective volatile currencies. YC’s backing of Bloom is also a significant win for the ecosystem, which only recently received its first foreign venture capital investment since international sanctions on the country were lifted in 2020, following a 30-year isolation period.