Nigerian business accounting startup Kippa has raised US$3.2 million in pre-seed funding to enable it scale its small business financial management app.
Kippa plans to use the funds to expand its product, which now has over 130,000 active users across Nigeria.
“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.
Target Global led a US$3.2 million pre-seed funding round for the startup, which also included Entrée Capital, Alter Global, and Rally Cap Ventures. 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 are among prominent angel investors who took part in the round.
Kippa, founded in June by Kennedy and Duke Ekezie, along with Jephtah Uche, is an app that assists merchants in increasing cash flow by recovering debts.
Small business owners may use the app to keep track of debtors and issue automated debt reminders. Merchants who use Kippa collect debts three times faster, allowing them to access key cash flow that is critical to their business’ existence.
Merchants can also track their entire profit by recording sales and expenses, creating invoices and receipts, managing their inventory, and recording sales and expenses.
Kippa’s product has a clear market need, according to Lina Chong, investment director at Target Global.
“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.