Nigerian restaurant cloud operating system provider Orda has raised a US$3.4 million seed round to further digitise food businesses across the continent.
Founded by Guy Futi, Fikayo Akinwale, Mark Edomwande, Kunle Ogungbamila, and Namir El-Khouri in 2020, Orda helps small-sized African restaurants optimise their business and achieve sustainable growth.
The startup raised a US$1.1 million pre-seed round in January, and since then has grown its customer base to more than 600 restaurants across Nigeria and Kenya. It is now processing over 500 per cent more weekly orders for its customers.
Orda’s US$3.4 million seed round was co-led by Quona Capital and FinTech Collective, and also saw participation from institutional investors including Far Out Ventures and Outside VC, angels Doneci Kone and Julian Shapiro, and follow-on investment from Norrsken Foundation, LoftyInc Capital and Enza Capital.
“From day one, Orda has been focused on building solutions for small and medium-sized restaurants. These businesses operate with slim profit margins and the power of Orda’s software and financial solutions can catapult their business. Our goal is to provide end-to-end solutions that help them optimize their operations so they become more prosperous,” Futi said.
Kofoworola Agbaje, senior investment associate at Quona Capital, said when a restaurant owner moves from pen and paper to a fully automated digital platform, it was “incredibly empowering”.
“Suddenly they have insights available to them that can improve their productivity and margins, enabling them to grow their businesses. A solution like Orda can have an outsized impact on small and medium-sized restaurants and the livelihoods of those who operate them, and we at Quona are delighted to support Orda in this important work,” she said.
Samantha Wulfson of FinTech Collective said digitising the long tail of restaurants across the continent presented an opportunity to tap into Africa’s largest consumer spend category.
“Not only does Orda’s omnichannel solution produce immediate efficiency gains for restaurants, but a roadmap encompassing embedded payments and credit also creates a path to tap into the flow of funds throughout an enormous food and beverage industry,” she said.
Following the progress in the last 12 months, Orda believes it has hit product-market fit, evidenced by the rapid rate of adoption, rising referrals, and increasing ease of onboarding new restaurants.
”We have a huge backlog of restaurants to onboard and we’re confident of reaching 1,000 active restaurants within the next three months. Our vendors love our solution and we do a good job of listening to feedback and incorporating that into the new features we roll out. We do our very best to always centre the restaurant’s experience at the heart of our operations,” said Afua Ahwoi, head of operations at Orda.
With the recently completed fundraise, Orda has vertical expansion in sight, as it looks to improve its payments, credit and lending solutions, helping customers unlock even more value from their businesses.
