Nigerian Startup Klasha raises $2.4M to scale Operations in Africa

San Francisco and Lagos-based startup, Klasha, has raised $2.4 million in seed to scale operations.

Venture capital firm, Greycroft, and other investors including Plug and Play, Seedcamp, Practical VC, 2.12 Angels, First Round VC, AVG Basecamp Fund, MiLA Capital, Expert Dojo, and Berrywood Capital, invested in the round, while angel investors such as Wise’s Joe Cross and Gumtree’s Michael Pennington also invested.

This will be the third significant investment that Greycroft has made in Africa after it placed bets on AZA Group and Flutterwave.

Klasha plans to use the funds to help retailers receive payments from African consumers and expand its operations into three more African countries before the year runs out.

Established in 2018 by Jessica Anuna who is also the CEO, Klasha originally enabled African consumers to seamlessly purchase products directly from global fashion retailers.

However, it has grown beyond that as it now has many features and a new business model aimed at helping Africans make payments and get the goods irrespective of their location.

Its technology provides easy cross-border transactions in a fast-growing continent that requires payment and logistics solutions for online commerce.

Exploring Klasha’s features

Klasha Checkout

This functions like Checkout and it enables international merchants to receive payments from Africa in local currencies using card, bank account, USSD, mobile money and M-Pesa.

Klasha’s checkout solution can be fused with any e-commerce platform and it has plugins for big e-commerce sites like OpenCart, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce (it plans on signing an official partnership with BigCommerce in a bid to extend its reach to more merchants globally).

KlashaWire

This enables consumers pay, through multiple payments methods, in African currencies. Klasha then remits in dominant currencies, like the U.S. dollar or euros, to merchants in two business days.

Payment links: This feature enables merchants who do not have storefronts to accept payments by sharing links with customers through email or social media.

Klasha Mobile App

The app enables users in Kenya, Nigeria, or Ghana to send and receive money, while allowing them to create virtual cards with the option to fund them with their respective currencies.

Klasha also offers logistics services in addition to its payments play, and plans on opening up the global e-commerce economy to consumers in Africa and merchants that want to easily expand into Africa.

It’s logistics service helps African customers receive their products from the US or Europe in 5-9 days, and is handled in partnership with third-party logistics providers.

The startup generates revenue through sales commissions and subscriptions that retailers pay to use the platform’s analytics for their products.

Klasha has processed over 20,000 transactions with claims to growing 366% month-on-month since its relaunch in May.

“For a lot of these retailers, this is the first time they’ve ever sold into Africa before. So we offer a complete end to end e-commerce suite for them as opposed to having to use disjointed services that aren’t interconnected with technology.” Klasha CEO.

Klasha partners with retailers like Zara, ASOS, and H&M, and has a customer base of 10,000 spread across Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya.

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