Orda, formerly known as StarKitchens, has raised $1.1 million in a pre-seed round to help it scale its software across Africa. LoftyInc Capital (Nigeria), a pan-African investor, led the round for the startup, which defines itself as a “cloud-based restaurant operating system created for African chefs and food business owners.”
Techstars Boulder (USA), Magic Fund (Nigeria), Hustle Fund (California, USA), Norrsken Foundation (Sweden), Microtraction (Nigeria), DFS Labs (Seattle, USA), Oxford Seed Fund (UK), Enza Capital (Kenya), Agrolay Advisors (Nigeria), and angel investors such as Buycoins’ Ire Aderinokun, Jesse Ovia, and Ademola Adesina are among the other investors in this round.
“There are two kinds of restaurants where the majority of our focus is on — the bukkas [local restaurants] and the small restaurants, for instance,” Orda co-founder and CEO Guy Futi said in a statement.
“These are the restaurants that have been using paper and pen and then that spend three to four hours on reconciliation. They don’t have access to software that does analytics and inventory management right off the gate. So, we decided to build a cloud-based restaurant software tailor-made for Africa’s massive chefs and restaurant industry.”
With the funding, Orda will expand its financial products, particularly in loans, and move into restaurant payment processing. The startup is also relying on the latest investment to expand into South Africa by the end of this year.
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Why The Investors Invested
The startup has generated considerable traction since was founded. Orda noted in a statement that its gross merchandise value (GMV) increases by 15% week over week while processing up to 10,000 transactions per week.
“We loved investing in Orda because it is building the core digital infrastructure for restaurants across Africa. The team has done the hard work of figuring out the core problems that African restaurant owners are facing and is building a solution that can revolutionise the food business across the continent,” Idris Ayo Bello, the managing partner of lead investor LoftyInc Capital, said.
A Look At What The Startup Does
The startup was founded in 2020 by Guy Futi, alongside CTO Fikayo Akinwale, Mark Edomwande, Kunle Ogungbamila, and Namir El-Khouri.
Orda’s full-stack and end-to-end strategy enables restaurants to conduct online deliveries while also integrating local payments, logistics, inventory management, and business analytics tools, according to CTO Fikayo Akinwale.
“Orda was built from a near 18 months of a collaborative customer feedback loop. We listened to everything, from how African restaurants reconcile inventory, how customers pay, to how they handle logistics and more. We can confidently say that no one has done as much work as we have to build an end-to-end solution for our food business owners.”, said the CTO in a statement.
Restaurants who utilize the management platform also have access to a dashboard that allows them to take and process orders from meal delivery services such as Jumia Food, Glovo, and Bolt Food, as well as in-store, online, and through social media platforms such as WhatsApp.
No other company in Orda’s industry, according to the company, has made such integrations. These integrations, which include an ePos solution that allows restaurants to operate in remote places with limited or no internet access, give Orda a competitive advantage, according to Futi.
Futi further stated that restaurant adoption has been “extremely frictionless” in the markets where it operates (Nigeria and Kenya), and that the cloud-based software doubles its growth rate every three weeks.
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Orda currently charges restaurants $5 (2,500) to $50 (30,000) each month to use its software.
“We want to become like the Toast of Africa,” expressed the chief executive, adding that Orda would also double down on its white-label mobile applications (similar to Toast Takeout) for restaurants that leverage its cloud-based infrastructure to operate.
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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