Investor Updates: September 30 2022

SA digital ID startup iiDENTIFii raises $15m for expansion

Highlights

• Cape Town-based digital identity startup iiDENTIFii has raised US$15 million in growth capital to fuel its expansion across Africa.
• iiDENTIFii has developed advanced face authentication technology that safely authenticates users via their cell phones or PCs within seconds. The startup operates across several industry verticals and is used by the largest pan-African banks, insurers, and mining houses for customer and employee authentication. 
• iiDENTIFii plans to use this investment—led by African investment company Arise, whose cornerstone investors include Rabobank Partnerships, Norfund, NorFinance, and FMO—to fund its expansion across Africa.

Source: Disrupt Africa

Our Takeaway

Globally, businesses lose up to $1 trillion annually to cybercrime and in Africa, that figure stands at a whopping $4 billion. As digital services, financial and non-financial, providers penetrate the African market at large, there is a need for fintech startups and digital businesses on the continent to carry out stringent Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and verification checks on their customers. iiDENTIFii, with its biometric authentication, is one of the many platforms providing these crucial services for other startups.

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Ugandan fintech startup Numida secures $12.3m pre-Series A

Highlights

• Numida, which uses proprietary credit models and underwriting processes to provide unsecured working capital loans to African micro and small businesses (MSBs), has raised a $12.3 million pre-Series A round of equity and debt funding.
• Launched in 2017, Numida began life enabling traditional MFIs to provide unsecured credit to semi-formal businesses but soon pivoted to begin lending to MSBs directly. 
• Since its $2.3 million seed round in April 2021, Numida claims to have grown 7.5x and provided over $20 million in unsecured working capital to 27,000 MSBs in Uganda. The fresh investment will help it move into more markets and expand its team.

Source: TechCrunch

Our Takeaway

Small and medium enterprises play a major role in most economies, especially in developing countries but access to finance has always been a major constraint to their growth. As many as 65 million firms, or 40% of formal MSMEs in developing countries, have an unmet financing need of $5.2 trillion every year, per the International Finance Corporation (IFC). That underscores the importance of startups like Numida, which have found ways to profitably finance these small and medium businesses across the continent.

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Egyptian startup Trella secures debt facility from Contact Financial

Highlights

• Egyptian trucking marketplace Trella has secured a debt facility from Contact Financial Holding to expand its business.
• Founded in 2018, Trella is a B2B technology platform and trucking marketplace connecting shippers with carriers in real time. Active across the Middle East and Pakistan, the startup has over 350 shipper partners including blue-chip brands, and more than 30,000 carrier partners.
• Trella had completed a $42 million Series A funding round, comprising $30 million in equity and $12 million in debt facilities in June 2021, to help it expand. It has now followed that up with further, undisclosed, debt capital.

Source: Disrupt Africa

Our Takeaway

Transport touches on almost every sector of the African economy and is crucial to its development. Within the industry, the trucking and logistics market accounts for almost 80% of transported goods but players in this space often grapple with challenges caused by fragmentation and lack of transparency. With digitization, venture-backed startups such as Trella solve this problem while tapping into the lucrative industry. More so, Trella is one of the most funded startups in Egypt, having received over $35 million in equity funding since its launch.