Pezesha, an embedded finance fintech platform has raised $11 Million Pre-series A investment
The round included $5 million in debt and $6 million in equity. The company will expand into new markets in Sub-Saharan Africa as a result of the fundraising round, which was spearheaded by Women’s World Banking Capital Partners II (WWBCP II).
Pezesha provides a B2B digital lending infrastructure with an emphasis on giving economically disadvantaged SMEs in Sub-Saharan Africa access to inexpensive working capital. According to estimates, this industry has a $328 billion financing deficit.
Hilda Moraa, a second-time fintech entrepreneur who successfully sold her first fintech company in 2015, created Pezesha in 2017.
The money from this investment will be used by Pezesha to strengthen its position in East Africa and extend its network of online lenders across the continent of West Africa.
With its headquarters in Kenya, Pezesha has concentrated on finding solutions to difficult infrastructure issues that leave MSMEs in the “missing middle.”
Pezesha, a pioneer in integrated finance in Africa, provides productive loans to tech-enabled platforms like Twiga Foods, Jumia, and Marketforce among dozens of others. By bridging the MSME information gap and repairing fractured value chains.
Partners provide credit and other financial solutions to their merchant network at the time of sale by effortlessly integrating with Pezesha’s APIs.
MSMEs receive real-time loan offers to buy stock and pay later thanks to Pezesha’s credit scoring APIs, which serve as the driving force behind a straightforward but reliable procedure.
Pezesha has boosted the worth of its disbursements by over 2,000% in the past two years by disbursing more than 100,000 loans to MSMEs in Kenya, Uganda, and Ghana.
According to Moraa, the company is thrilled to have attracted institutional investors, led by Women’s World Banking Capital Partners II, to support its expansion objectives and advance its mission.
Pezesha is similarly thrilled about the fact that WWBCP II consciously invests in women, since it enables the business to firmly establish inclusivity in its expansion strategy as a viable means of achieving its goal of establishing Africa’s MSME lending infrastructure.
The company also believes that the strategic investors included in this round will assist it to advance and make it possible for millions of MSMEs to access inexpensive working capital throughout African value chains. These investors support the fundamentals of financial inclusion in their thesis.
The second gender-lens investment fund launched by US-based nonprofit Women’s World Banking and administered by WWB Asset Management is known as WWBCP II.
By making investments in strong-performing financial service companies that cater to low-income women and have a committed technical assistance center to support portfolio companies in achieving their strategic goals for gender inclusion, the fund intends to eliminate the gender gap.
Verdant Frontiers Fintech Fund, an initial stage African Fintech Fund focused on accelerating financial inclusion, cFund and IOG, ventures investing in blockchain infrastructure-layering innovations, Talanton (values-driven private impact investment fund), and Verdant Capital Specialist Funds investing in debt in this round are additional strategic investors that have joined the round.
Techbuild’s Take
B2B lending infrastructure is growing as a result of the seemingly limitless development of digital platforms of all types that are present in many aspects of our daily lives. It is becoming increasingly obvious that technology will undoubtedly impact our tomorrow.
The majority of these platforms, including Pezesha, aim to close the gender gap in the business-to-business sector while simultaneously giving money to the underprivileged.
B2B is a continuously expanding market that draws investors from all around the world. Women’s World Banking Capital was drawn to Pezesha to assist in expanding the platform and providing new services to its consumers.
To help MSMEs who do not be eligible for loans build their credit and assure prudent borrowing as they advance up the Pezesha financial ladder, Pezesha also provides financial literacy classes and debt counseling.
The original post was first published here.
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