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Kuda Bank Raises a Series B Funding of $55m at a $500m Valuation

Hafiz Akinde
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Kuda Bank Raises a Series B Funding of $55m at a $500m Valuation

Kuda Bank has raised a Series B funding of $55 million at a valuation of $500 million. The funding was secured via its London entity and comes on the back of some impressive early growth for the startup.

This latest Series B was a relatively quick inside round since it’s coming from existing investors. The series B funding was co-led by Valar Ventures and Target Global with previous angel investors like SBI and a host of others also participating.

Valar Venture’s co partner, Andrew McCormack, said that he was really impressed with Kuda’s approach to the still-nascent potential of the market and that was what informed their decision invest in the startup.

“Kuda is our first investment in Africa and our initial confidence in the team has been upheld by its rapid growth in the past four months,” Andrew said. “With a youthful population eager to adopt digital financial services in the region, we believe that Kuda’s transformative effect on banking will scale across Africa and we’re proud to continue supporting them.”

“We felt that Babs and Musty” — Musty Mustapha, the co-founder and CTO — “are ambitious on another level. For them, it was always about building a pan-African bank, not just a Nigerian leader,” said Ricardo Schäfer, the partner at Target who led the round for the firm. “The prospect of banking over 1 billion people from day one really stood out for me at the beginning.”

Kuda Bank’s main objective is to build a new take on banking services for “every African on the planet.” According to the co-founder and CEO Babs Ogundeyi, the funding will be used to double down on new services in Nigeria and also prepare its launch into more countries on the continent.

Kuda now has about 1.5 million registered users, which is more than double the amount it had in March when it around 700,000 registered users – a statistic it shared when announcing its Series A of $25 million led by Valar Ventures.

Speaking to TechCrunch at a recent interview, Kuda Bank’s CEO, Ogundeyi, said: “We’ve been doing a lot of resource deployment has been in our operational entity, in Nigeria. But now we are doubling down on expansion and the idea is to build a strong team for the expansion plans for Kuda Bank.”

The CEO further said that “we still see Nigeria as an important market and don’t want to be distracted so don’t want to disrupt those operations too much. It’s a strong market and competitive. It’s one that we feel we need to have a strong hold on. So this funding is to invest in expansion and have more experience in the company with relation to expansion.”

According to TechCrunch, Ogundeyi wouldn’t reveal the countries Kuda Bank would be targeting next, but he did note that its most recently-launched product, Kuda’s first move into credit by way of an overdraft allowance, is a sign of the great things ahead.

Ola Williams Emerges Microsoft’s New Country Manager

Hafiz Akinde
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Ola Williams Emerges Microsoft’s New Country Manager

Ola Williams has emerged as the new Country Manager for Microsoft Nigeria. The former Enterprise Voice Technology Specialist and Specialist Sales Leader will take over from Akin Banuso who will now serve as the Enterprise Commercial Lead for the Middle East and Africa– Multi market region.

Her new role will see he leading Microsoft to accelerate Nigeria’s Digital transformation and cloud adoption across all their customer segments. Furthermore, she’ll identify new opportunities and mobilize internal organization resources as well as external stakeholders.

Ola who has spent 21 years in IT has expressed optimism about the positive growth of IT in Africa. She believes that Africa has a lot of potential regarding the use of technology to better our lives and transform our businesses.

Speaking after the announcement was made, Ola said: “it’s a great honour to be taking on this exciting journey at a time when the organisation is focused on growing and accelerating Africa’s transformation.”

Ola who holds an MSc at the University of Liverpool will join Microsoft’s Middle East and Africa – Multi market region’s Leadership team and will report to the Multimarket region’s General Manager, Ibrahim Youssry.

Nigeria’s Ready to Deploy 5G, NCC says.

Sodiq Ajala
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Nigeria’s Ready to Deploy 5G, NCC says.

The Nigerian Communications Commission’s (NCC) Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umar Danbatta recently says that Nigeria is now set to roll out 5G services across the country.

This NCC’s push for the 5G rollout is part of the fulfillment of its commitment to “put Nigeria on the frontline as a technology-driven economy,” as highlighted by Vanguard Nigeria.

Nigeria cannot afford to fall behind some other countries that have implemented services in line with the sector’s dynamics and global demand for emerging technology.” Danbatta remarked.

He continued that the Commission had finally completed its preparations – “crossed all the Ts and dotted all the Is” – and is currently awaiting approval from the Federal Government to begin rolling out 5G services.

Prof. Danbatta made this announcement during a public inquiry on the draft frequency spectrum (fees and pricing, and annual operating levy regulations) held on Thursday in Abuja.

The justifications for this NCC’s decision commenced as rollout plans across the country were sealed after series of pre-trial 5G rollout exercises were conducted by Airtel and MTN Nigeria. The NCC point man furthered that the Commission is now ready for the rollout and had already submitted a proposal to the Federal Government for approval.

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