Nigerian business accounting startup Kippa has raised US$3.2 million in pre-seed funding as it looks to scale its small business financial management app.
Launched in June by brothers Kennedy Ekezie and Duke Ekezie together with Jephtah Uche, Kippa has developed an app that helps merchants to increase cash flow by recovering debts.
Using the app, small business owners can keep track of debtors and send automated debt reminders. Merchants using Kippa recover debts three times faster, unlocking critical cash flow that is essential to the survival of their business. Merchants can also record sales and expenses, create invoices and receipts, manage their inventory, and track the overall profit of their business
The startup has announced a US$3.2 million pre-seed funding round led by Target Global with participation from Entrée Capital, Alter Global and Rally Cap Ventures. A number of prominent angel investors also participated in the round, including Sriram Krishnan (investor in Khatabook), Raffael Johnen (CEO, Auxmoney), Babs Ogundeyi (CEO, Kuda), Chris Bouwer (board member, Cellulant), Kyane Kassiri, Edward Suh (Goodwater Capital), and Sajid Rahman.
Kippa will use the funding to further scale its product, which already has more than 130,000 active users from across Nigeria. In the past five months, over US$300 million has been recorded by merchants who use the product.
“Our approach is simple. We chose to be digitally native rather than pursue the digitisation of analogue processes that previous players have done. The long-term vision for Kippa is clear – we are building a full-range end-to-end finance management solution for small businesses, playing across all critical layers of the SME digitisation space. Kippa is the first B2B SaaS tool most of our users have ever used and we are excited to build for this critical segment,” Kennedy Ekezie, Kippa’s CEO, said.
Lina Chong, investment director at Target Global, said it was clear that Kippa’s product had a strong need in the market.
“In a very short time since launch, this incredible team has grown the merchant base to over 130,000 monthly active users, growing by 126 per cent month-on-month. Our investment in Kippa will enable it to grow and be the first-choice financial management solution for small businesses in Africa,” she said.
