Kippa, a Nigerian bookkeeping and finance app for SMEs, has raised $3.2 million in pre-seed funding led by Target Global. Entrée Capital, Alter Global and Rally Cap Ventures also participated.
This is in addition to a number of angel investors including Babs Ogundeyi, Sriram Krishnan, Raffael Johnen, Chris Bouwer, Kyane Kassiri, Edward Suh, and Sajid Rahman.
Kippa’s pre-seed round, one of the largest in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa, will be invested in growing its merchant base, improving its product, scaling the team, and venturing into financial services.
Founded in February 2021 by Kennedy Ekezie, Duke Ekezie and Jephthah Uche, Kippa is a mobile app for African small company owners and bookkeepers that replaces physical record books. Using Kippa for bookkeeping, African merchants are brought into the digital ecosystem.
The app can also help business owners keep track of debtors and send automated reminders to them. The company claims that merchants who use Kippa this way recover debts 3x faster.
The startup says that it has grown an average of 126% month-on-month since launching in June. With over 130,000 active businesses, ranging from small kiosks and street corner shops to local food vendors and high-end merchants using the app, Kippa claims to have recorded more than $300 million in the past five months.
“For us, what we do is we have such a unique opportunity to provide financial services to users. For most of them, Kippa is the first B2B SaaS app that they’re using,” said CEO Kenedy Ekezie.
“And we do have a unique opportunity to help them accept online digital payments, to provide them with working capital, digital savings and plug them into the financial ecosystem.”
Commenting Lina Chong, Target Global investment director said: “Our investment in Kippa will enable it to grow and be the first-choice financial management solution for small businesses in Africa.”
