Payhippo, a Nigerian loan company, has raised $3 million in initial investment to expand its technological capabilities and help small companies in Nigeria uncover new sources of cash for their clients.
Payhippo, founded by Chioma Okotcha, Uche Nnadi, and Zach Bijesse in January of last year, provides loans to small companies in Africa that are generally overlooked by banks due to their lack of credit histories in under three hours.
Payhippo, a member of the Y Combinator S21 batch cohort, has given 5,000 loans to small companies in Nigeria to date. The firm made $64,000 in income in September 2021 from $900,000 in loans given, a 25% monthly growth rate, and a 97 percent loan payback rate.
Payhippo received a pre-seed round of $1 million in July and followed it up with a seed round of $3 million in August. Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled, co-founders of Chipper Cash; Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, co-creator of Flutterwave; Bolaji Balogun, CEO of Chapel Hill Denham; and Hakeem Belo-Osagie, founder of Metis Capital Partners, led the round.
Paystack, Brex, and Tala management, as well as LPs from Payhippo’s pre-seed investors, are among the other angel investors. TEN13, VentureSouq, and Prodigio Capital are among institutional investors.
“The funding will allow us to invest in hiring more engineers and data scientists. We aim to improve our technology and enhance our lending offerings as we continue to address the persistent financing gap for small businesses in Nigeria. At Payhippo, our vision is to provide millions of small businesses with sufficient and available capital to run and grow their businesses,” said Chioma Okotcha, co-founder and COO of Payhippo.
Chapel Hill Denham’s founder and CEO, Bolaji Balogun, expressed his delight at Payhippo’s use of technology to give SMEs in Africa the capital they require to develop their businesses.
“By lending to small businesses, Payhippo is allowing business owners access much-needed working capital to grow their businesses and create much-needed jobs in the economy,” he said.
New financial technologies are being created and applied, according to Ham Serunjogi, co-founder and CEO of Chipper Cash, which is transforming the competitive environment in Africa’s banking industry.
“Access to credit is a critical necessity for small businesses to manage their daily challenges. Payhippo helps address this need through its innovative approach that provides loans to small businesses in less than three hours enabling them to have access to sufficient working capital to grow,” he said.
