Fido, a Ghanaian fintech, announced that it has raised $30 million in a Series A round led by Israel-based private equity fund, Fortissimo Capital with participation from Yard Ventures; a VC fund by Harvard alumni.
The company intends to use the funds for the following:
- introduce savings and payment products before the end of the year;
- open a second research and development centre in Accra, Ghana thereby augmenting the Israel branch, to help it automate most of its operations; and
- expand into Uganda, its second market, as it prepares to expand to more regions across the continent
Fido was founded by Nadav Topolski, Tomer Edry and Nir Zepkowitz, and it gives mobile loans of up to $250 to individuals and small businesses. The loans are repayable through single or multiple instalments for a period of up to six months.
According to Fido CEO, Alon Eitan in an interview with Techcrunch, “What we are seeing in the market today is a segment of customers, who are mostly small entrepreneurs, that don’t really have access to traditional banking systems … and we see an opportunity to offer these customers, who are outside banking systems, savings products that are fully-digital and very easy to use.”
“Customers will be able to deposit from mobile money, cards and even cash, and we receive attractive returns on those savings. Our payments product will be layered on top of existing payment rails, as we want to create interoperability between all the different payment rails that are popping up in different countries today.” he added.
Eitan says that the company has issued over $1.5 million loans to 350,000 customers in Ghana and believes that this will grow as it plans to enter Uganda.
“Uganda in many ways resembles Ghana, and we understand the regulation very well. We think it’s a very big market, both in terms of population size, but also in terms of the penetration of mobile. So, there are about nine million mobile accounts in Uganda and so it’s very important for us to go to a market that is already mature because it helps us deliver our services instantly, which is what we really want to do,” he said.
Fortissimo Capital partner, Yochai Hacohen, said in a statement, “We are truly impressed by the team’s [Fido’s] ability to underwrite people instantly while delivering sustainable economics. This differentiates them from the other players in the space.”
“Fido brings a genuinely differentiated offering that solves an enormous challenge by using disruptive technologies. Now world-class fintech technology is available to all, for mutual growth and shared prosperity.”
