Nigerian Start-up Kippa Raises $8.4M In New Funding To Deepen Financial Services To SMEs

The Nigerian financial management and payment platform, Kippa has recently raised $8.4 million in a fresh round of seed funding to create financial services that will aid SMEs.

Kippa is a simple app where small business owners can keep track of their daily income, create invoices and receipts, expense transactions, and manage their business inventory.

Over the years, a lot of small businesses ran operations such as managing money, inventory tracking, and records of staff and suppliers offline, mainly with pen and paper or ledgers.

All these inefficiencies, asides from being time-consuming, lead to errors and affects cash flow and finance, which is why almost nine out of 10 small businesses fizzle out in the first five years.

Kippa was launched in June 2021, to offer digital business and financial management solutions to small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in Nigeria.

Since its inception, it has so far received investment from backers such as Goodwater Capital, TEN13 VC, Rocketship VC, Saison Capital, Crestone VC, VentureSouq, Horizon Partners, and Vibe Capital.

“We expect the number of digitally active small businesses to grow exponentially over the next three to five years. As more small businesses come online, Kippa will own the money button on the devices of these merchants, says Kippa CEO Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph.

In an interview last year November,  CEO Ekezie-Joseph disclosed that Kippa had over 130,000 active businesses, ranging from small kiosks and street corner shops to local food vendors and high-end merchants.

With Kippa, small business owners can keep track of their daily income and expense transactions, create invoices and receipts, manage inventory and generally monitor how their businesses ebb and flow over time.

Currently, the company has further expanded its offerings. It provides a suite of financial services that enable small-sized business owners to incorporate their businesses legally, open bank accounts, receives and send payments, build online web stores, and manage their entire business from one platform.