Bamboo, a startup for foreign stock markets, based in Nigeria has announced it has raised $15 million in a new financing round, following two years of significant growth and raising $2.4 million to facilitate it. 

“Stocks and selling stocks is a regulated business and currently, we are only live in Nigeria. Working very closely with regulators in Nigeria, we have to work within the ambit of what they are comfortable with and what they allow. That’s the extent to which we are offering our services. Perhaps if we launched in other markets and regulators there have a different relationship with a certain asset class, we would also work within the ambit of what they are comfortable with,” said the CEO Richmond Bassey. 

U.S.-based Greycroft and Tiger Global co-led the Series A round (it’s the second Tiger Global-led investment announced this month after Ghanaian fintech Float). Motley Fool Ventures, Saison Capital, Chrysalis Capital and Y-Combinator CEO Michael Seibel are some of the other investors in Bamboo’s round, the company said in a statement.

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The money will be used to expand to Kenya and South Africa, where there has been a lot of interest.

A portion of the funds will be utilized to scale the company’s technological infrastructure in order to improve processes and speed withdrawals. 

Why The Investors Invested

The startup has generated considerable traction since it was founded in 2020. According to the company, it has over 300,000 members; roughly 20% of those are active daily traders, while the other 75% have never traded stocks before. Repeat depositors accounted for 85 percent of all deposits on the Bamboo platform in 2021. Since announcing plans to launch in Ghana, a neighboring West African country to Nigeria, the company said it has also received over 50,000 Ghanaian registrations on its waitlist.

Tiger Global and Greycroft have backed previously successfully backed retail platforms such as Robinhood and Public. 

A Look At What The Startup Does

Launched in January 2020 by Richmond Bassey alongside COO Yanmo Omorogbe, offers a wide range of global stocks to its users. 

“What we essentially want to do is to make investing in the global stock market easy for Africans,” said Richmond Bassey.

“In accessing investment options, especially in capital markets, both locally and globally, we want to make that easy for Africans because we’re driven to help Africans create and preserve wealth by owning shares in the world’s most successful companies.”

Users with naira or dollar bank accounts will be charged a 1.5 percent commission on every transaction they conduct through the Bamboo platform, with withdrawals costing between 45 ($0.1) and $45 (depending on the currency).

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Bamboo also wants to release complementary solutions to its B2B offering, allowing wealth managers and fintech firms to integrate the platform into their customer and trademark stock-trading operations.

Bamboo claims to be distinct from its current competitors, such as Chaka, Rise, and Trove, in terms of the types and classes of securities it offers. Bamboo, for example, provides access to U.S. equities, ETFs, and ADRs, while Chaka deals with stocks and ETFs traded on domestic and international capital markets, although both have faced regulatory hurdles at home.

The startup, which has recently clashed with Nigerian regulators, says it is awaiting approval from the country’s regulators to begin offering Nigerian stocks before the second quarter of this year, allowing Africans and those in the diaspora to participate in the continent’s investment opportunities.

Bamboo’s present standing with Nigerian regulators is unknown, but Bassey claims the company has received a court order to unfreeze its accounts. When the regulators slammed the brakes on it, the funds were frozen. Operating in a constrained regulatory environment has hampered some capabilities that Robinhood and other investment platforms freely provide but Bamboo cannot, at least for the time being, such as cryptocurrency.

Ghana is Bamboo’s next target market.

Bamboo foreign stock Bamboo foreign stock

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