Egypt’s Cassbana, which offers lending solutions to different types of users especially those who don’t use conventional banking services, has landed $1 million in a seed round led by Egyptian fintech-fcused VC Disruptech. Cassbana plans to use the funds to expand its operations.
“We aim to establish financial identities for those dealing with institutions and service providers contracting with us, in order to enable these clients to obtain financial services, whether to grow their business or bypass any unaccounted risks. Without this financial identity, many suffer from uncomfortable and expensive options for obtaining financial services or no options at all,” Cassbana’s CEO, Haitham Nassar said in a statement.
Why The Investor Invested
The investment was made by VC Disruptech, founded by one of Egypt’s most successful fintech startups, Fawry’s co-founder and former managing director Mohamed Okasha and ‘leading finance guru’ Malek Sultan. In 2019, the VC established an Egypt-focused $25 million fintech fund and subsequently made its first two investments in Khazna & Brimore. It subsequently followed it up with investment in ecommerce startup, Fatura. The fund invests in Egyptian fintech startups across different stages.
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A Look At What Cassbana Does
Founded in early 2020 by a former Careem executive Haitham Nassar, Cassbana is building financial identities for different types of users especially those who don’t use conventional banking services. It does this by offering lending solutions to different groups of these users and then using artificial intelligence and different other technologies to assign credit scores to them. In its own words, it uses short instant loans, behavioral data from the users, and machine learning, to build their financial identities.
The first group of users Cassbana is working with are the people running nano or micro-retail enterprises including grocery, cosmetics, or clothing stores. The Egyptian fintech provides these stores with inventory financing by partnering with different distributors so whenever a business owner needs inventory for their store, they can get it from one of Cassbana’s partners without having to pay any money at the time of transaction.
At the time of the transaction, the money is paid by Cassbana – which later receives it in installments from the business owner. The business owners can request financing and make the payments of their installments through Cassbana’s mobile app. After they complete the signup process, they are shown a credit limit – within which they can make the purchases from one of fintech’s partners.
When they make the payments (for their loan) on time, their credit score improves and so does the limit to obtain more inventory financing. The service was launched in June 2020 with one distributor as its partner in Cairo; the company now has 20 in different cities across Egypt.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer