Nigerian digital bank closes $10 million funding
Kuda, the Lagos and London based fintech building a pan-African digital challenger bank, has announced the successful closing of a $10 million fundraise.
The seed round, which is the largest ever African fintech seed raise, was led by Target Global, one of Europe’s leading venture capital firms – with participation from Entrée Capital and SBI Investment.
Other fintech founders and angel investors participated in the round, including Raffael Johnen (founder of Auxmoney), Johan Lorenzen (founder of Holvi), Brandon Krieg/Ed Robinson (founders of US-based, Stash), and Oliver and Lish Jung (angel investors in Nubank, Revolut and Chime).
The fundraise follows Kuda’s $1.6 million pre-seed financing in September 2019, when it launched its beta version. Since then, the company has experienced exponential growth and now serves over 250,000 customers and processes over $500 million of transactions, monthly.
Proceeds will help accelerate growth plans and keep up with customer demand. Specifically, funds will be used for key hires, product development, and to expand operations across Africa – beyond Kuda’s launch country – Nigeria.
Kuda is a zero fee, full service, digital bank – and was the first digital challenger bank with its own microfinance banking licence in Nigeria. Kuda’s mission is to revolutionise the banking sector and give regular African banking customers access to free banking services.
Kuda’s CEO and co-founder, Babs Ogundeyi said, “We are very excited for Kuda’s next phase. It is a great validation of our business model and rapid growth to date – to have the support of both Europe’s leading fintech investors and founders of successful global technology businesses. Their financial backing and support will only benefit Kuda and our customers.”
Dr. Ricardo Schäfer, partner at Target Global, who will also join Kuda’s board, commented, “The emergence of digital challenger banks, providing customers with a free, digital and significantly better banking experience compared to services offered by traditional banks, has seen huge success across the globe. Kuda is one of Africa’s leading digital challenger banks and one of the fastest growing fintechs on the continent. We are very excited to be working with Babs, Musty and the entire Kuda team to further build on the fantastic momentum they have had since inception and support them in taking the company to the next level.”
Avi Eyal, partner at Entrée Capital said, “Kuda’s relentless drive and ability to execute quickly has allowed it to carve out a highly disruptive business model in the finance and banking industry.”
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