Kuda, a digital bank based in Nigeria, has raised $10 million in Seed Funding. This is by far, the biggest seed round ever to be raised on the African continent.
The digital bank had last year, raised $1.6 million in Pre-seed round to launch a beta version of its service. This gives the start-up up to 11.6 million dollars seed funding, till now.
According to the CEO, Babs Ogundeyi, the funding comes on the back of strong demand for Kuda’s services, as well as its ambitions to become the go-to bank – not just for those living in Africa, but for the Africans in the diaspora.
“We want to bank every African on the planet, wherever you are in the world,” Babs Ogundeyi said in an interview.
The $10 million Seed Funding was led by Target Global, with Entrée Capital and SBI Investment (formerly of SoftBank). Also participating include a number of other notable individual fintech founders and angels.
The list of angel investors, according to TechCrunch, includes Raffael Johnen (founder of Auxmoney), Johan Lorenzen (founder of Holvi), Brandon Krieg/Ed Robinson (founders of Stash), and Oliver and Lish Jung (angel investors in Nubank, Revolut, and Chime).
Kuda was Founded in 2017 by CEO, Babs Ogundeyi and the CTO, Mustapha Musty. It was initially launched as a lending platform, and called Kudimoney, before transitioning into a digital-only bank.
After receiving a Microfinance banking licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2019, as Kudimoney, the start-up made it clear that it was seeking to challenge the existing banking system in the country; eliminate inefficient services, as well as soothe the ridiculous charges pressured on millions of customers.
Kuda, after transitioning from Kudimoney, didn’t begin full fledged digital banking services until the last quarter of 2019, after the Pre-seed round.
The CEO, Babs Ogundeyi noted that the start-up was not of the intention of functioning as a glorified fintech start-up.
“We’re not a mobile wallet or simply a mobile app piggybacking on an existing bank. We have built our own full-stack banking software from scratch. We can also take deposits and connect directly to the switch.” – Babs Ogundeyi.
Kuda has been functioning for about a year now, without a disappointing track record. The digital bank now has over 300,000 customers, and process about $500 million worth of transaction monthly.
