Duplo, a Nigerian company that aims to digitise payment processes for B2B organisations, has received a US $1.3 million pre-seed investment and confirmed its participation in the Y Combinator W22 batch in Silicon Valley.
Duplo, founded in September 2021 by Yele Oyekola and Tunde Akinnuwa, enabling B2B businesses to automate payment inputs, reconcile at scale, and provide a simplified experience for business clients.
Duplo describes itself as a “financial operating system for B2B firms,” allowing businesses to handle all of their payment operations as well as provide financial services to their clients.
Oui Capital, an early-stage pan-African venture capital firm, led the US$1.3 million pre-seed round, which also included MyAsia VC, Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, and Mono CEO Abdul Hassan. After Duplo was confirmed as a participant in its newest programme, along with a slew of other African entrepreneurs, Y Combinator became an investor.
Duplo plans to utilise the funds to improve its product, develop its technology, expand its sales capacity, and expand into other markets. The firm is currently active in the FMCG retail arena, but it is also looking to expand into other areas such as tourism, agriculture, B2B markets, and wine and beverage.
“We are trying to make cash obsolete in Africa where lots of businesses in the distribution space heavily transact in cash for obvious reasons. We are focused on distributors, merchants and aggregators to stop the use of cash in this value chain because everyone knows how expensive cash is and how difficult it is to move with issues around theft and fraud,” Oyekola said.
“Our value proposition is we help businesses automate, embed and launch payment products. Basically, inflows or outflows, automatic reconciliations for businesses and embedding payments into marketplaces. And then we also have businesses that want to provide BNPL services to smaller businesses.”
Oui Capital principal Peter Oriaifo expressed his delight in assisting the Duplo team in their efforts to develop a new product.
“We believe that with the proliferation of commerce in Africa, there’s an emerging need for solutions such as Duplo’s that help abstract away complexities around payments,” he said.
