The Nigerian company Duplo has acquired US $4.3 million in early investment to develop new products and diversify into new industry sectors. Duplo is a B2B payment platform that makes it simpler for African businesses of all sizes to pay each other.
Duplo, a platform created by Yele Oyekola and Tunde Akinnuwa, enables B2B businesses to automate payment inputs, reconcile at scale, and improve the experience for business clients.
Duplo, which bills itself as a “financial operating system for B2B firms,” allows businesses to handle all of their payment operation requirements as well as provide financial services to their clients.
The firm, which participated in the Y Combinator W22 batch and announced a US$1.3 million pre-seed investment earlier this year, has now quickly advanced to seed with this US$4.3 million investment. Investors in the round include Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Tribe Capital, Commerce Ventures, Basecamp Fund, and Y Combinator. Oui Capital also made a second investment after taking part in the prior round.
Since coming online in January, Duplo has gained significant traction with FMCG distributors and finance teams of mid-sized and enterprise organizations, assisting them in digitizing and streamlining the way money is transferred between them and their business partners. With the additional cash, it intends to create new goods and enter new market segments.
“We have seen a lot of innovation in consumer payments in Africa in recent years but business-to-business payments have largely stayed the same. We strongly believe that there is a great opportunity to catalyse growth and maximise business opportunities across the continent by removing the bottlenecks that hinder the seamless flow of money between businesses and we are excited to have raised funding from this exciting group of investors to deliver this much-needed transformation,” Oyekola said.
The Duplo team has created an “amazing” suite of solutions that enhance how companies make and receive payments from one another, according to Peter Oriaifo, principal of Oui Capital.
“The growth that the company has experienced since our initial pre-seed investment in 2021 has been nothing short of impressive. It is for this reason that we are excited to back Duplo once more,” he said.
