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Nigeria’s Kuda Technologies raised $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Valar Ventures with participation from Target Global and other investors. Co-headquartered in London and Lagos, Nigeria, Kuda offers mobile-first banking services to help people from the African diaspora manage their money and credit digitally. Kuda’s services are currently only live in Nigeria and this is the first African startup that Valar has financially backed. Kuda’s CEO Babs Ogundeyi says the company plans to use the Series A to expand its credit offerings, add more integrations to its platform, build services excessively for businesses and expand to more markets. “Nigeria is at a tipping point in the adoption of digital banking,” Andrew McCormack, a general partner and co-founder at Valar, told TechCrunch . “With the rapidly growing, youthful population who are open to new financial alternatives, Kuda is well-positioned to benefit and will transform the landscape of African banking.” This...
Payment technology company Promise secured more than $20 million in a Series A funding round last month. With this fresh investment, the company’s co-founder and CEO Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins told AfroTech that she has big growth plans moving forward. Promise launched in 2017 and its original focus at that time was creating payment technology for the criminal justice system to help scale bail reform. Ellis-Lamkins said the company did that for about a year and a half before making a pivot after participating in Y Combinator’s Spring 2018 cohort. Promise has since created a payment solution that makes customizable plans and offers digital payment options to users who need to make government payments like parking tickets, child support, utilities and more. Ellis-Lamkins said this idea came to her when she was in New Orleans and realized people were in jail for simple parking tickets. She realized the same issue was happening in Oakland, where her company is based. After doing some...
CEO and founder of Uplifting Results Lab, Marc Washington created Muniq — the LA-based, innovative consumer health and food-tech brand — in an effort to inspire more people to regain control of their health. Today, Muniq announced in a press release the closing of a $8.2 million Series A investment round. The round was led by Alpha Edison and Acre Venture Partners, in addition to NBA star, Baron Davis, founder of SimplyProtein, Cathy Richards, and more private equity investors. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Muniq (@muniqlife) “I created Muniq in honor of my late sister, Monica, who suffered from diabetes and other chronic health issues,” said Washington, who also has an extensive background as a health and wellness executive. “It’s always been my aspiration to help people regain control over underlying conditions, with products that can literally transform their health and that actually taste good.” Muniq offers products like nutritional shakes formulated with...
Funding isn’t a one-time deal for most startups. It’s common for startups to raise capital via multiple funding rounds, each being a step above the previous. Even when a startup achieves success in a lower round, they continue to raise capital via consecutive rounds in efforts to scale their business to new heights. So, what are funding rounds? How do they work? How do you determine how many funding rounds are appropriate for your startup? We’re glad you asked. Here’s all you need to know: What is a funding round? Essentially, a funding round is a period of time where a startup sets out to raise capital in order to achieve a goal or milestone. In between funding rounds, the startup will continue to improve via sales, digital impressions, or adding new team members to increase the overall valuation, which is evaluated and assessed by potential investors. There is no standard amount of time between funding rounds which is usually determined by founders who feel their valuation has...