Ejara, a Cameroonian fintech offering an investment app that allows users to buy crypto and save through decentralized wallets, has raised $8 million in Series A investment. The round was co-led by Anthemis and Dragonfly Capital.
Participating VC firms in this new financing include other follow-on investors Mercy Corps Ventures, Coinshares Ventures and Lateral Capital — and new investors such as Circle Ventures, Moonstake, Emurgo, Hashkey Group and BPI France. Jason Yanowitz, the co-founder of Blockworks, is one of the angels in the round.
Founded in 2020 by CEO Nelly Chatue-Diop and Baptiste Andrieux, Ejara is an app for Africa and its diasporas to access various investment that offers fractional shares, commodities, cryptocurrency, and more.
Ejara has seen 10x revenue growth and achieved a 15% month-on-month transaction volume growth since last October despite crypto’s meltdown — expects users on the platform to reach 100,000 by the end of the year.
Both lead investors in this round recognise Ejara’s ambition to be a financial super app of some sort for users in French-speaking Africa and even those in the diaspora who send and invest money back home.
Mia Deng, a partner at Dragonfly, said Ejara is well-positioned to imitate the growth of China’s Alipay and WeChat Pay, two prominent web2 super apps, and help the Francophone region achieve a web3 financial leap in the coming years.
“Conscious of the challenges across the zone, Ejara does not intend to limit itself to being a crypto app, but rather to become a one-stop shop for products tailored to the needs of Africans: a shop where a suite of financial products will be accessible at their fingertips, without the need for any crypto knowledge,” stated Ruth Foxe Blader, partner at Anthemis, on Ejara’s potential.
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