Mono, a Lagos-based startup which analyzes financial data for companies, has raised $2 million in seed funding round. The company will use this funding to bolster its current financial data offerings and launch new products for various lines of business. In addition, it is preparing its expansion to Ghana and Kenya in the coming months, with a few clients (including banks) in these two markets.

“Our expansion is primarily driven by our customers looking to expand into other markets, such as some of our products. We work with our customers and seek to create new experiences for them,” said Abdul Hassan, co-founder and CEO of Mono.

Here Is What You Need To Know

• Entrée Capital, Kuda co-founder and CEO Babs Ogundeyi, Gbenga Oyebode, partner at TCVP, and Eric Idiahi, co-founder and partner at Verod Capital are among the new round’s investors. After participating in Mono’s pre-seed, VC Lateral Capital, based in New York but based in Africa, also invested in this round.

• The investment comes eight months after the $500,000 pre-seed fundraiser made by the startup. 

• This new commitment brings to $2.6 million, the total funds raised to date by the Nigerian fintech. 

Why The Investors Invested

Since January this year. the first call of most VC investments in Nigeria has always been in the fintech sector. In 2019 alone, out of a total of 250 African startup funding deals amounting to a record-breaking $2.02 billion reported by data firm Partech, financial technology companies (fintechs), at 41%, received the lion’s share. It is therefore no surprise that the investors chose Mono. 

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This is even strengthened more by the fact that the investors in Mono’s latest round, such as Lateral Capital and Entrée Capital have their portflios mostly made up of fintech startups. 

Also strengthening its pitch to investors is the fact that even though the startup is playing in a relatively saturated ecosystem — fintech — it is carving out a niche for itself, by going the API way. In April 2020, Okra, a similar API fintech platform, led by Fara Ashiru Jituboh and David Peterside, became the first African API startup to raise $1 million. The number of similar startups doing exactly what Mono is doing and which have raised appreciable funds, has since been on the increase.

Again, the investment was also helped by the fact that Mono’s founders have themselves previously founded successful startups.

Mono’s latest fundraiser also seems to have also been partly influenced by the CEO of Kuda, Babs Ogundeyi’s participation in this round. Late last year, Entrée Capital was part of the investors that participated in Kuda’s $10 million fundraiser. 

Concerning the investment, Avil Eyal, managing partner and co-founder of Entrée Capital, had this to say.

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“We are very excited to be working with Abdul, Prakhar and the entire Mono team as they continue to build out the rails for African banking to enable the delivery of financial services to hundreds of millions of people across the African continent.”

A Look At What The Startup Does

Launched in August 2020 by Abdulhamid Hassan, ex-Product Manager, Paystack and the Indian Prakhar Singh, who previously founded Transferpay.ng, Mono enables companies and developers to access financial accounts for historical and real-time transactions, balances, bank statements, credits, and spending patterns of a customer.

Mono claims to currently exist in Nigeria as well as testing its beta bank connections in Ghana and Kenya.

“Our mission has always been about making it easier access data in a simple, elegant and lightning-fast way. More API verticals (e.g. Intelligence insight API) coming soon,” the startup noted in a statement.

The startup also noted that its team is currently spread across its headquarters in Lagos, and India.

Nevertheless, while it appears that the company has found a product-market fit, CEO Abdul Hassan is quick to point out that the emerging API fintech space is just the beginning of the company’s search to become a data company, as he said in February.

“The way I see it, our market is not that big. Compare the payments market now with 2016, when Paystack and Flutterwave just started. The payments space in 2016 was very small and the number of people using cards online was very small,” said Hassan. “It’s the same thing for us right now. That’s why our focus isn’t only on open banking but data. We’re thinking of how we can power the internet economy with data that isn’t necessarily financial data. For instance, think about open data for telcos. Imagine where you can move your data from one telco to another instead of getting a new SIM card and making a fresh registration. That’s where I see the market going, at least for us at Mono.”

fintech Mono fintech Mono fintech Mono

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