Fresh from raising $1million in pre-seed funding in June 2021, Nigerian lending Fintech startup, Payhippo announced that it has raised $3million in seed funding.
This seed round was led by some investors including Chipper Cash co-founders – Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled; Flutterwave CEO – Olugbenga Agboola; Chapel Hill Denham CEO, Bolaji Balogun and Metis Capital Partners founder, Hakeem Belo-Osagie.
The fintech startup says that it intends to use the funds recruit more staff (engineers and data scientists) to optimise its technology as it scales up its operations. According to the company’s co-founder and chief operations officer, Chioma Okotcha, “We capture our data from the loans we issue, and more talent in the team would allow us to optimize our technology to serve our customers better.”
Founded in 2019 by Zach Bijesse (CEO), Chioma Okotcha (COO), and Uche Nnadi (CTO) , Payhippo is an AI-Driven lending platform making it easier to finance small and medium sized businesses. Its mission is to serve the 40 million small and medium sized business who are unable to gain access to the funds necessary to grow their business.
Payhippo says it has so far disbursed about 5,000 loans since inception, valued at $1 million and with a repayment rate of 97%, earning them $64,000 in revenues. The average loan disbursed by Payhippo is about $1,300, with the minimum loan being about $200.
Payhippo says it applies its own credit scoring formula that uses different SME data to determine the value of loans to give out and the loans are disbursed through mobile phones.
In July this year, the startup partnered with MVX, a Nigerian digital freight booking and trade finance technology startup, to expand trade finance opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses in Nigeria.
