Youverify, a Know Your Customer (KYC) and other compliance procedure automation company with offices in Lagos and San Francisco, has announced that it has secured a $1 million seed round extension after initially raising a $1.5 million round in 2020, bringing its total seed raised capital to $2.5 million.
The two investors who co-led its initial seed round of fundraising, Africa-focused VCs Orange Ventures and LoftyInc Capital, led the most recent round of funding. Octerra Capital, Plug & Play Venture, Syntax Ventures, HTTP Investors, Afer Group, and Fronesyz Capital all contributed further funding.
Over the next 18 months, Youverify wants to reach 30 countries, with a particular emphasis on Africa’s francophone, southern, and eastern areas, where it will actively recruit, according to Odegbami. It also has plans to increase the number of IDs it can examine from 400 million to 2 billion, as well as develop new automated compliance products for the gambling, travel, healthcare, and telecommunications sectors.
Why The Investors Invested
The startup has recorded considerable traction since it was founded. According to the company’s CEO, Gbenga Odegbami, the company has consistently pushed to offer more goods to increase its product reach to a sizable number of financial institutions across the continent. As a result, the business has developed a reputation that distinguishes it from rivals based on the services it provides.
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Odegbami claimed that Youverify’s customer base rose by 300 percent to service more than 400 banks and high-growth startups as a result of diversifying its clientele base and rising demand for its KYC products.
More than 5 million applications have been handled through Youverify’s application procedures over the past 24 months, assisting its customers with remote onboarding of ride-hailing drivers, the sale of financial items, and staff hiring. The company’s YouID digital identity platform attracted more than 500,000 new users, and 600 service providers from around the continent are waiting to join its marketplace.
The Lagos-based identity verification business surpassed a $1 million ARR in 2017, claims Odegbami.
A Look At What The Startup Does
Youverify was established and introduced to the Nigerian market in 2018. It initially offered numerous financial institutions an API for address and identity verification. Other KYC products have since been added, and it now has expansion plans for additional markets like Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda.
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Gbenga claims that the startup didn’t begin working with fintech companies until last year. At first, the majority of its clients were banks, large firms like Bolt, and governmental organisations. The platform’s identity verification and KYC products are used by over two-thirds of Nigeria’s commercial banks, including Standard Chartered, Standard Bank, and Fidelity Bank.
The Youverify OS (YVOS), which offers a single platform for automating due diligence and combines risk and compliance management with its core identity verification platform to provide these fintech companies with an enterprise-grade compliance solution, was however introduced by the company in an effort to serve more customers.
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Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh