Churpy, a Kenyan account receivables automation startup, has acquired $1 million in seed capital to grow throughout Africa through the establishment of hubs in Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa.
The seed investment was headed by Unicorn Growth Capital and included participation from Antler East Africa (after a $100,000 pre-seed), the Nairobi business angel network, and a number of Rally Capital’s limited partners, including senior Stripe personnel.
The startup stated that it aims to alter how businesses handle customer debt with its Software as a service (SaaS) platform, which automates the labor-intensive processes of reconciling incoming payments and invoices, which are still mostly manual for the majority of small businesses.
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Additionally, the startup announced plans to launch a working capital finance product aimed at small- to medium-sized businesses that sell to enterprise customers who subscribe to the startup’s SaaS platform.
“We are hiring more people as we plan to enter Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, which are the hubs into their (respective) regions. We are also putting finances into product development as we plan to scale our offering,” Kennedy Mukuna, Churpy co-founder said
Makuna said in its SME plan that SMEs gain from prompt payment for goods delivered to these businesses, rather than having to wait months for payment.
He said, “SMEs have a huge financing gap. They are the suppliers to these big companies and need capital to keep taking raw materials to their other clients. Usually, they need collateral to access loans from banks and wait for approval to access capital to keep their business going. What we are doing is ensuring that they get paid not long after they deliver goods to partner enterprises for a 0.5% origination fee. Once their invoice matures, we get paid,”
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Barbara Iyayi, co-Founder and CEO, Unicorn Growth Capital said “It is clear that B2B payment operations are significantly under-penetrated and ripe for modernization and disruption globally. We are excited to partner with the Churpy team as the first mover in the market.
“Churpy is the only available end-to-end platform that provides accounts receivable automation, an invoice marketplace and reconciliation with integrated B2B payments specific to its markets. They are well-positioned to be a critical partner to businesses and lenders in Africa, and can effectively address the significant credit gap faced by SMEs for supplier finance and working capital.”
Churpy account receivables Churpy account receivables
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