Hakki Africa, the Japanese startup offering micro-finance services for taxi drivers in Kenya, has raised $10.6 million in the 1st close of its series B round led by SBI Investment with participation from QR Investment (by Hokkoku Financial Holdings), Deepcore, Hakobune and Music Securities
Hakki Africa also secured debt from an undisclosed Japanese megabank and Hokkoku Bank.
In December of 2020 and March 2022, the firm raised a seed round and Series A round respectively bringing the latest funds raised to date north of $12.3 million.
Hakki Africa competes Nigerian startup Moove which is rapidly expanding across Africa, the US and planned launch in Latin America. Moove is backed by Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Innovation Partners and raised secured $10 million in debt in August 2022.
Moove, signed an Memorandum of Understanding [MoU] with Mitsubishi UFG and Suzuki to advance financial inclusion and job creation as well as upskilling opportunities in the sector. Signed at the eighth Tokyo International Conference on African Development [TICAD] conference, the tri-party agreement underscores the opportunity to leverage technology to improve the livelihoods of millions of people in emerging markets.
Taxi drivers in Africa, are largely unbanked and underbanked and this makes it nearly impossible to get access to loans to finance car ownership. Hakki Africa aims to make it easy for such drivers to own their cars via its credit rating systems to offer loans and M-PESA mobile money statements plus their driver revenues.