With over $79 billion asset under its management, one of United States’ leading investors, Tiger Global seems to have found a home in Africa, Nigeria more precisely. After leading investments in locally founded unicorn startup Flutterwave, expat-led Fairmoney, and most recently in South African edtech unicorn Go1, the VC firm is back, although still conforming to its previous pattern of investment — going after mostly fintechs.
The firm has led a $15 million Series A round in Nigerian fintech API startup Mono. Joining the global investment giant in the latest round of investment are new investors Target Global (an investor in neobank Kuda), General Catalyst, and SBI Investment as well as existing investors, Entree Capital, Lateral Capital, GPIC, Acuity VC, and Ingressive Capital.
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With this investment, Mono’s total fund-raise is $17 million, barely over a year since the startup was launched.
“We feel the team at Tiger felt we were doing something amazing but thought what we had raised wouldn’t help us build a big company. And they were like, ‘we want to help you build a big company,” said Hassan.
Bouyed by the latest investment, Mono intends to expand beyond Nigeria, with plans to be present in five African countries by the end of next year.
Why The Investors Invested
Unarguably, since participating in the Y Combinator accelerator program this year, Mono has been on a roller-coaster ride in terms of fundraising. The latest investment comes on the heels of its most recent $2 million seed funding round, an investment it landed fresh out of YC. The YC Combinator effect became more obvious given that the startup’s $500,000 pre-seed round in September last year was led mostly by a host of local investors.
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But perhaps, the startup’s business model and the traction it has acquired during the short span of its existence inspired the investors’ confidence in this round. The company’s business mode l— open finance — only started to gain traction last year. Nigeria’s Mono, OnePine and Okra, as well as South Africa’s Stitch and Pngme and Okra are currently some of the few players in that niche.
Also consolidating the startup’s business model in the eyes of the investors is Mono’s relative traction in a short space of time. Mono claims to have handled over 200 million financial data transactions from over 270 companies, developers, and fintechs. In the last two months alone, the company said it has connected over 150,000 bank accounts, which is up 45 percent year over year. Mono’s headcount has doubled in the last year, according to its CEO, with roughly 30 employees.
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This relative traction has possibly positioned the startup as one of the continental leaders in a sphere so hotly contested as open finance. Global payments giant, Visa, recently failed to successfully take over Plaid, an American company doing almost exactly what Mono is doing. The move by Visa has led investors to increase the tempo of funding in similar startups in other parts of the world that they believe may be key acquisition targets for Visa if it decides to go that extent.
If that happens, Mono is strong African candidate for such acquisitions, a fact well known to Tiger Global. According to Hassan, the VC firm approached Mono to lead a fresh round; and while Mono had no plans to seek additional funding this year, the capital from Tiger Global would help it develop more quickly.
A Look At What The Startup Does
Launched in August 2020 by Abdulhamid Hassan, ex-Product Manager, Paystack and the Indian Prakhar Singh, who previously founded Transferpay.ng, Mono enables companies and developers to access financial accounts for historical and real-time transactions, balances, bank statements, credits, and spending patterns of a customer.
Mono claims to currently exist in Nigeria as well as testing its beta bank connections in Ghana and Kenya.
“Our mission has always been about making it easier access data in a simple, elegant and lightning-fast way. More API verticals (e.g. Intelligence insight API) coming soon,” the startup noted in a statement.
According to CEO Abdulhamid Hassan, Mono has two products that give it an advantage over its competitors. First, there’s DirectPay, a service that allows Nigerian businesses to accept bank transfer payments from customers through their website or mobile app without requiring them to use their debit cards.
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Secondly, Hassan describes Statement Pages, its other product, as the first of its kind in Africa, allowing businesses to access clients’ financial accounts without the need for a developer.
The startup also noted that its team is currently spread across its headquarters in Lagos, and India.
Tiger Global Mono API Tiger Global Mono API
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