Indicina, an analytics-driven credit worthiness platform for lenders, focused on building API-driven credit infrastructure for Africa has raised $3 million in a Seed round to foster its commitment to the credit value chain.
The round was led by Target Global with participation from Greycroft and RV Ventures. Ricardo Schaefer, Partner at Target Global will also join the board.
According to Yvonne Johnson, Co-Founder and CEO of Indicina, “Our mission to empower credit providers is a journey, and this is just the beginning. With a global team spanning 8 cities and 4 continents, we are better equipped to support our valued customers with more data-driven products. This new investment round will power all the workings of our next phase, and we’re excited to partner with an excellent group of investors.”
The new funding round will accelerate the firm’s expansion into other African markets and enable it to reinforce its key product offerings, build more products for Consumer credit recommendation, and bolster its infrastructure.
Indicina is one of the pioneers of products designed to enable lenders unlock economic inclusion for African businesses and consumers. Almost three years later, and the firm is continuing its mission to deliver on this promise as it has become a leading provider of ML-driven financial analytics. It has also tripled its customer base across core customer segments — banks, non-bank lenders, and tech start-ups.
Africa has a poor credit infrastructure and low risk innovation. Only 11% of its population have their credit information recorded by private credit bureaus vs 16% in East Asia and 47% in Latin America. And among African banking customers, only 17% have consumer loans — less than half of those with a transaction product.
This massive consumer credit opportunity requires technology and credit risk innovation that most lenders currently don’t have.
“Our products enable a competitive digital offering backed by strong data and analytics capabilities for more efficient customer acquisition and risk assessment. Our enterprise customers are digitising customer journeys with greater speed, and our FinTech customers are leveraging our APIs for their embedded finance offerings,” said Johnson.
Last year, Indicina was part of the six new startups to join Catalyst Fund’s existing portfolio of 37 companies and receive £80,000 in grant capital. they included Kenya’s Koa, Lami, Power; Nigeria’s Indicina, Jetstream; and South Africa’s Kandua.
In 2020, Indicina raised US$ 150,000 seed round from Itanna to expand its operations within Nigeria, and to further build its proprietary technology platform. The firm had also expected to use some of the funds to expand into other regions in Africa. These new round will help it pursue that dream!
Ricardo Schäefer, Partner at Target Global said “We are firm believers that access to credit is a core facet of financial inclusion and are excited to back Indicina, whose goal is to ensure that eligibility for loans will no longer be determined by incomplete creditworthiness assessments.”
The growth of digital financial services is accelerating on the continent, with non-bank players leading the charge (notably Telcos and FinTechs). This includes a maturing digital payment infrastructure and more open banking start-ups providing improved datasets for digital lending. Companies need to build increasingly innovative applications that leverage the data exhaust. Our architecture sits on top of customer data infrastructure providing deeper insights and allowing customers to go to market faster with more innovative products.
“Limited access to credit in Africa is a data problem, not a creditworthiness problem. We are unlocking opportunities by eliminating the complexity associated with accessing the data necessary to make underwriting decisions. We are excited about Indicina’s ability to expand the breadth of financial services available to consumers and businesses across Africa.” added Will Szczerbiak, Partner, Greycroft.