Global Ventures, a Dubai-based venture capital firm, mostly invests in businesses in the Middle East and North Africa region, but it has been stretching its tentacles in recent years. After previously investing in Helium Health in Nigeria and Ilara Health in Kenya, the VC has returned to Nigeria to invest in fintech startup TeamApt. The fintech business recently announced the completion of its Series B investment round as it strives to expand following its transformation from B2B to B2C.
“Universal access to financial services is key to the advancement of any society. We built Moniepoint because we believe everyone deserves to enjoy financial happiness and this can only happen when they can access financial services effortlessly,” said Tosin Eniolorunda, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of TeamApt.
“This fundraise is happening at a significant time in our growth as a company. In the past years, we have exceeded several strategic milestones without external funding, helping accelerate the Central Bank of Nigeria’s target of 95 per cent financial inclusion by 2024, but as the hurdles of financial access are not unique to Nigeria, this funding allows us to extend our solutions to other parts of Africa,” he said.
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The investment although undisclosed came from was led by Novastar Ventures with participation from FMO, Global Ventures, CDC, Oui Capital, Kepple Africa Ventures, Soma Capital, and a syndicate of local angel investors including Gbenga Oyebode.
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Why The Investors Invested
The traction the startup has garnered since 2015 when it was founded made the whole difference. It now maintains a network of 92,000 agents across Nigeria. The startup’s solutions are also being used by over 15 million customers and 100,000 businesses and top-tier banks in the country.
TeamApt has created its agency network quickly and successfully to become Nigeria’s #1 operator, a testament to the team’s expertise and the platform’s exceptional user experience, Brian Waswani Odhiambo, head of West Africa at Novastar Ventures, said.
“We are glad to catalyse their vision by providing TeamApt with sufficient capital to pursue its new phase of growth,” he added.
TeamApt was already profitable by 2020, with over $3 billion in transaction volume processed and considerable margins maintained.
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“And they’re only getting started. Financial inclusion is a challenge in Nigeria but also across Sub-Saharan Africa, where only 43% of the region’s adults are banked. The opportunity to address this challenge through mobile and agency banking is significant, and we are thrilled to partner with the mission-driven team at TeamApt as they break new frontiers in financial inclusion in Africa and beyond,” noted Global Ventures in a statement.
A Look At What The Startup Does
TeamApt was founded in 2015 to address inefficiencies in Nigeria’s developing digital financial services market, and it offers a number of solutions. The firm has 100% of Nigeria’s commercial banks as customers and received a switching license and a US$5.5 million Series A fundraising round from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2019.
The firm said in January that it would move its focus from supplying financial services solutions to banks to selling goods to consumers and companies in order to expand on its successful performance in 2020.
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