Indicina, a Nigerian fintech firm that is developing API-driven credit infrastructure for Africa, has raised $3 million in investment to help it expand into other African countries.
Indicina is a digital infrastructure company founded in 2018 by Yvonne Johnson, Jacob Ayokunle, and Carlos del Carpio with the goal of enabling economic inclusion for African consumers and enterprises. The company’s core product is a data-driven lending platform that automates the credit value chain.
Target Global led the $3 million fundraising round, which also included Greycroft and RV Ventures. Ricardo Schaefer, a Target Global partner, will also join the board of directors. Indicina plans to utilise the funds to expand into new African areas, as well as to strengthen its core product offerings, develop more consumer credit advice tools, and improve its infrastructure.
“Africa has a poor credit infrastructure and low-risk innovation. Only 11 percent of its population have their credit information recorded by private credit bureaus versus 16 percent in East Asia and 47 percent in Latin America. And among African banking customers, only 17 percent have consumer loans – less than half of those with a transaction product,” said Johnson.
“This massive consumer credit opportunity requires technology and credit risk innovation that most lenders currently don’t have. Our products enable a competitive digital offering backed by strong data and analytics capabilities for more efficient customer acquisition and risk assessment. Our enterprise customers are digitising customer journeys with greater speed, and our fintech customers are leveraging our APIs for their embedded finance offerings. This new investment round will power all the workings of our next phase and we’re excited to partner with an excellent group of investors.”
Indicina has increased its client base across main customer sectors — banks, non-bank lenders, and tech startups – in the last year, becoming a top provider of machine learning-driven financial analytics.
“We are firm believers that access to credit is a core facet of financial inclusion and are excited to back Indicina, whose goal is to ensure that eligibility for loans will no longer be determined by incomplete creditworthiness assessments,” Schäefer said.
