Nigeria: Microtraction invests in credit assessment platform
CARMA, a tech-startup filling the credit-data gap in sub-Saharan Africa, has announced an early-stage funding round led by venture capital firm Microtraction. The financing will be used to expand CARMA’s operations across the continent and launch its headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria.
The establishment of the Lagos office, led by Ted Martynov, co-founder, and CEO, comes as the company looks to foster seamless customer support and account management by providing a fully decentralised protocol of data sharing for enterprises to fuel credit assessments with extra data points. This will help lending and non-lending organisations monetise their data to create a passive revenue stream. The company also connects enterprises by providing a data supply chain for organisations with access to CARMA services, contributing to data-driven business decisions.
According to the World Bank private credit bureau coverage 2019, only 14% of adults in Nigeria have a credit history from credit bureaus and only financial institutions are currently submitting data on individuals and commercial entities regularly. As a one-stop-shop for pan-industry data, lenders in Nigeria can now access data on a real-time basis via CARMA’s decentralised technology while data contributors will also have access to monetise their data in a secure data marketplace.
Ted Martynov, CARMA’s co-founder and CEO said, “Our early-stage venture funding allows us to invest in growing our presence across sub-Saharan Africa and our ability to address the gap in the credit data ecosystem while strengthening our network of clients. We are also focusing on supporting companies with quality data in the credit decision process to avoid non-performing loans. We anticipate strengthening our services across the region, which will bring us closer to helping companies enhance data sharing to build proper credit assessment procedures.”
“We are excited to be CARMA’s partner as part of their Africa rollout. Microtraction supports several great tech teams across the continent and we are acutely aware of the gap in access to credit data, which we believe is a fundamental one to fill. Providing a solution that addresses this lack of data improves the quality of business processes and also helps the mass populous with access to financing, which of course, is very critical during these times as the world continues to fight a health and economic crisis. We look forward to working with CARMA as we continue to support teams working to address infrastructural challenges across Africa,” said Chidinma Iwueke, partner at Microtraction.
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