Appzone, a Nigerian based Fintech software provider, announced that it has secured $10 million in Series A funding led by a Lagos-based investment firm, CardinalStone Capital Advisers with investors like V8 Capital, Constant Capital, Itanna Ventures and Lateral Investment Partners participating in the round.
In 2014, Appzone raised $2million from South African Business Connexion (BCX). It also raised another $2.5 million in 2018 through convertible debt and share buy back from BCX. Overall, it has raised $15 million in equity funding.
Speaking on the fundraise, Appzone’s Co-Founder and CEO Obi Emetarom says: “We’re excited not only to be securing a significant capital raise, but also welcoming on board some strategic investors whose support will be key to our growth journey. Today’s news allows us to scale Appzone’s products and services rapidly. For the last 12 years, we’ve worked in stealth mode, building the really complex infrastructure to power the continent’s growing digital financial services space and forging partnerships with the continent’s biggest financial institutions. In terms of next steps, we are now looking to hire from Africa’s top 1% to grow our team of elite talent who have proven themselves to be true African builders; the brightest senior software engineers and domain experts, doing the incredibly hard work of building the backbone and next generation infrastructure for digital financial services at a level beyond world-class. We are seeking out gifted and audacious engineering and entrepreneurial minds, hungry to accelerate economic prosperity and tackle challenging technology with us. We are not just trying to bring African fintech on-par with the rest of the world – we exist to make our financial sector the most innovative and technologically advanced on the globe through solutions built for Africa by Africans.”
Appzone says that its platforms are being used by 18 commercial banks and over 450 micro finance banks in Africa to date, amassing a yearly transaction value and yearly loan disbursement of $2bn and $300mn respectively. However most of its clients are based in Nigeria. So it intends to use the new funds to expand across Africa, beginning with the countries it already has a small presence in, such as Ghana, Gambia, Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania and Senegal.
The company also intends to use part of the new funds to double its engineering team. According to Obi Emetarom, “Our proprietary tech allows us to innovate at a fraction of a cost, and they are built by essentially the best local talent available. Because those systems are really complex and the level of innovation required is on another level, we literally seek out the to 1% of talent in Nigeria,” he remarked. “We know that even though the expertise isn’t there, we can accelerate acquiring that expertise when we train the very best talents. The more we train our engineers, the faster they grow in terms of expertise, and they will be able to deliver at the same level of world-class quality we expect.“
In line with its growth mission, it recently expanded its executive team with the appointment of Efosa Aiyevbomwan and Omonuwa Olulano as Group Chief Marketing Officer and Group Chief Human Resources Officer, respectively
Appzone was founded by Emeka Emetarom, Obi Emetarom, and Wale Onawunmi in 2008, providing commercial banks with custom software development services to support digital financial offerings.
Since its inception, the alumnus of the Google launchpad accelerator, has led Africa’s fintech sector through radical innovation that resulted in a number of global firsts from the continent, including the world’s first decentralised payment processing network , the first core banking and omni-channel software on the cloud and the first multi- bank direct debit service based on single global mandates.
In 2018, the company obtained an officially approval from the Central Bank of Nigeria to operate as a Payment Solution Service Provider (PSSP) and has been the recipient of a number of industry awards including the Frost & Sullivan Award, NAMB (National Association of Microfinance Banks) and CeBIH (Committee of eBusiness Industry Heads) awards.
According to Yomi Jemibewon on the investment, the co-founder and managing director of Cardinal Stone Capital Advisers, said the firm’s investment in Appzone is further proof of Africa’s potential as the future hub of world-class technology.
“Appzone is building a disruptive fintech ecosystem that will be the backbone of Africa’s finance industry with products across payments, infrastructure and software as a service. The impact of Appzone’s work is multifold — the company’s products deepen financial inclusion across the continent whilst providing best-fit and low-cost solutions to financial institutions. Its emphasis on premium talent also helps stem brain drain, rewarding Africa’s best brains with best in class employment opportunities,” he added.
