Carma, a Kenyan based credit data marketplace has secured funding from Microtraction, an early-stage VC firm to expand presence across the continent and set up operations in Lagos, Nigeria. Carma is also relaocating its headquarters from Nairobi. Kenya to Lagos, Nigeria.
Carma provides lending companies with access to real-time credit data on a peer-to-peer basis through a pay-as-you-go service.
Ted Martynov, CARMA’s Co-founder and CEO, said: “Our early-stage venture funding allows us to invest in growing our presence across sub-Saharan Africa and our ability to address the gap in the credit data ecosystem while strengthening our network of clients.”
“We are also focusing on supporting companies with quality data in the credit decision process to avoid non-performing loans. We anticipate on strengthening our services across the region, which will bring us closer to helping companies enhance data sharing to build proper credit assessment procedures.”
“We are excited to be CARMA’s partner as part of their Africa rollout. Microtraction supports several great tech teams across the continent and we are acutely aware of the gap in access to credit data, which we believe is a fundamental one to fill,” said Chidinma Iwueke, Partner at Microtraction.
“Providing a solution that addresses this lack of data improves the quality of business processes and also helps the mass populous with access to financing, which of course, is very critical during these times as the world continues to fight a health and economic crisis. We look forward to working with CARMA as we continue to support teams working to address infrastructural challenges across Africa.”
This is Microtraction’s second investment outside Nigeria after its first investment in money transfer startup, Bit Sika, in December 2019. This year alone, it has invested in edtech startup, Gradely, and loan marketplace, Evolve . It recently changed its terms of engagement, now offering $25,000 for 7% of a company
