Quona Capital, LoftyInc, others participate in restaurant platform's seed round
African restaurant cloud operating system provider Orda announced the completion of a $3.4 million seed round to further digitise food businesses across the continent.
The seed round, which was co-led by Quona Capital and Fintech Collective, also saw participation from institutional investors like Far Out Ventures, Outside VC, angels like Doneci Kone and Julian Shapiro, and follow-on investment from Norrsken Foundation, LoftyInc Capital and Enza Capital. Following its previous raise of $1.1 million, the current round brings Orda’s total funding raised to $4.5 million.
Orda’s vision is to help small-sized African restaurants optimise their business and achieve sustainable growth.
Samatha Wulfson of Fintech Collective said, “Digitising the long tail of restaurants across the continent presents an opportunity to tap into Africa’s largest consumer spend category. Not only does Orda’s omnichannel solution produce immediate efficiency gains for restaurants, but a roadmap encompassing embedded payments and credit also creates a path to tap into the flow of funds throughout the $300 billion-plus food and beverage industry.”
Since its first fundraising announcement, Orda has grown its customer base to over 600 restaurants across Nigeria and Kenya and currently processes over 50,000 weekly orders for its clients.
Small independent restaurants are the soul of Africa’s food service industry, representing the largest segment of the $50 billion industry. However, these restaurants have had limited access to technology solutions tailored to their needs.
Speaking on Orda’s focus on small restaurants, Guy Futi, Orda’s CEO and co-founder said, “From day one, Orda has been focused on building solutions for small and medium-sized restaurants. These businesses operate with slim profit margins and the power of Orda’s software and financial solutions can catapult their business. Our goal is to provide end-to-end solutions that help them optimise their operations so they become more prosperous.”
Before Orda, managers at these small restaurants, who often double as cooks, spent as many as four hours a day doing manual reconciliation, inventory management, and other administrative tasks. Now, through its products, Orda is enabling many small-sized African restaurants to optimise their business operations and scale distribution. Its array of products and services includes kitchen display systems, order and inventory management, integrations with the leading food aggregators (e.g. Glovo, Bolt Food, Chowdeck, Jise, Wabi2b, etc), accounting software, microsites, mobile apps and soon-to-come – lending. Even better, when restaurants use these products, Orda is able to provide them with advanced business analytics that informs them of customer behaviour, which in turn helps with inventory optimisation, and loss prevention.
Building solutions for African restaurants has also required certain considerations specific to the region. For example, despite being a primarily cloud-based solution, Orda’s application works offline allowing restaurants to continue to log data even when internet access is unavailable – the data syncs with the cloud application when the restaurant is back online. The cloud operating software has also been built to have maximum functionality even when there is spotty internet service.
“When a restaurant owner moves from pen and paper to a fully automated digital platform, it’s incredibly empowering,” said Kofoworola Agbaje, a senior investment associate at Quona Capital. “Suddenly they have insights available to them that can improve their productivity and margins, enabling them to grow their businesses. A solution like Orda can have an outsized impact on small and medium-sized restaurants and the livelihoods of those who operate them, and we at Quona are delighted to support Orda in this important work.”