Nigerian fintech start-up Kuda has raised $55 million in a Series B round that will be used to expand its operations in Nigeria and to other countries.
The round was raised by existing investors, co-led by Valar Ventures and Target Global as well as SBI and a number of previous angels.
The new funding, according to TechCrunch, has raised its valuation to $500 million due to some impressive early growth for the fintech company.
The Series B follows Kuda’s $25 million raise in March 2020, a feat cheered for being the largest seed round by an African start-up.
Commenting on the new fund, the co-Founder and CEO, Babs Ogundeyi told TechCrunch, “We’ve been doing a lot of resource deployment in Nigeria. But now we are doubling down on expansion and the idea is to build a strong team for the expansion plans for Kuda.
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“We still see Nigeria as an important market and don’t want to be distracted so don’t want to disrupt those operations too much. It’s a strong market and competitive. It’s one that we feel we need to have a stronghold on. So this funding is to invest in expansion and have more experience in the company with relation to expansion.”
Andrew McCormack, a general partner at Valar Ventures who co-founded the firm with Peter Thiel and James Fitzgerald, said that the still-nascent potential of the market, and how Kuda is approaching that, were behind its decision to invest in the startup another time.
“Kuda is our first investment in Africa and our initial confidence in the team has been upheld by its rapid growth in the past four months,” he said.
“With a youthful population eager to adopt digital financial services in the region, we believe that Kuda’s transformative effect on banking will scale across Africa and we’re proud to continue supporting them.”
Kuda had in March said it has 1.4 million registered users, a 124 per cent growth from 650,000 registered users.
