In order to considerably expand operations in its main markets and expand into new ones within Sub-Saharan Africa, the embedded finance FinTech firm Pezesha, located in Kenya, has secured a pre-Series A investment of US $11 million.
Pezesha, a B2B digital lending infrastructure founded in 2017 by Hilda Moraa, specializes in offering inexpensive working capital to SMEs in Sub-Saharan Africa who are financially excluded.
At the point of sale, partners provide credit and other financial services to their merchant network by integrating easily with Pezesha’s APIs. Its credit-scoring APIs serve as the driving force behind a straightforward yet reliable procedure where MSMEs obtain real-time loan offers to buy goods and pay later.
Pezesha has increased the value of its disbursements by over 2000% over the past two years and has given more than 100,000 loans to MSMEs in Kenya, Uganda, and Ghana. The US $11 million fundraising round will be utilized to increase its market share in West Africa and increase its footprint in East Africa.
Women’s World Banking Capital Partners II, a gender-lens investment fund founded by US-based non-profit organization Women’s World Banking and managed by WWB Asset Management, led the transaction, which included a combination of US $6 million in equity and US $5 million in debt. Verdant Frontiers Fintech Fund, cFund, IOG, Talanton, and Verdant Capital Specialist were other strategic investors.
In addition, Pezesha is expanding the debt liquidity market by collaborating with smart institutional investors like IOG-Cardano. By overlaying DeFi liquidity channels on top of the scalable digital lending infrastructure, the alliance enables the business to access inexpensive funding.
“We are excited about attracting institutional investors led by the Women’s World Banking Capital Partners II to harness our growth plans and push our mission to the next level. We are equally excited that WWBCP II intentionally invests in women, which allows us to cement inclusivity in our growth plans as a sustainable path towards our vision of building Africa’s MSME lending infrastructure,” Moraa said.
“We’re excited to join Pezesha’s journey,” said Christina Juhasz, chief investment officer at Women’s World Banking Asset Management. “Pezesha is dedicated to solving Africa’s working capital problem through its robust lending infrastructure and this investment will allow them to deepen the range of financial products offered especially to women-owned MSMEs. We look forward to teaming up with Pezesha as it drives financial inclusion in Africa and continues to increase the number of women served in its business ecosystem.”
