KudiGO, the Ghanaian fintech & big data startup, innovating around informal retail has announced it has raised a SEED investment round of $450,000 USD led by Founders Factory Africa & 3 other Angel Investors (A Ghanaian, an American & A Nigerian).
The announcement comes at a time the startup which is less than 2 years old achieved a new milestone of One Thousand (1k) businesses using its platform in Ghana & Nigeria and just went live with digital payment processing (Mobile Money, Card-POS, QR, USSD) as part of its service offering in both countries.
KudiGO and five (5) other fintech startups join the Founders Factory Accelerator program as their first cohorts in Africa, having successfully run this model in the UK over the past 5 years.” Founders Factory Africa delivers a 100% bespoke corporate-backed accelerator and incubator
with the aim of building and scaling 140 tech-based startups across four sectors over the next five years.
In October 2018, Standard Bank was the first investor into Founders Factory Africa, with fintech as its strategic sector. Not only has FFA invested in KudiGo, but it has also pledged its commitment “to scaling the company through a bespoke six-month acceleration that includes tailored support from a specialist team including product design, tech engineering, data science, growth marketing, investment, to name a few.”
As such, KudiGo as a participating company has “access to global capital, talent and knowledge transfer through the Founders network that includes world-class entrepreneurs, investors, corporate and successful startups across Africa, Europe, the UK and the US.”
Chief Enabler at KudiGO Inc Kingsley Abrokwah in an interview, hinted that the main reason for going with the Founders Factory accelerator as against any other had everything to do with the nature and structure of the program and how it fits perfectly into the vision for KudiGO.
KudiGO from the very onset understood the need for strategic partnerships with big corporates if it was to achieve its mission of disrupting informal retail with a focus on economic impact. As such, in its first year, it signed a partnership with Sage Pastel and Interswitch Group, which has seen it chalk great successes and milestones during its first-year run.
Founders Factory comes on board with Standard Bank Group (the largest Bank in Africa) as a direct investor and strategic partner. This not only offers KudiGO the capital required to grow but also gives us direct access to a willing corporate investor to open channels and markets for
us to push our innovation and derive maximum impact from it.
“Having successfully closed this initial investment round, we are focused on achieving our year end target of 5,000 businesses on our platform, achieve a 40% business growth for these businesses by virtue of using our solutions, rolling out our credit referencing and micro-lending modules specifically targeted at users of our platform in partnership with our strategic partners and investors”, Kingsley further commented.
Its an exciting time for the team at KudiGO, with their focus on enabling the un-addressed informal retail industry in Africa; they bring a new seal to the fintech space on the continent with the backing of the team at Founders Factory Africa.
