Nigerian lending startup, Lidya, announced that it has secured $8.3 million in a pre-Series B funding round. The company secured $1.25 million in 2017 and $6.9 million in 2018. The seed round was led by Alitheia Capital via its uMunthu Fund and other investors including Bamboo Capital Partners, Accion Venture Lab and Flourish Ventures.
Founded in 2016 by Tunde Kehinde and Ercin Eksin, Lidya provides credit for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Africa. The company says funds will be used to grow its lending operations for small and medium businesses across its markets, thereby solidifying its presence in the markets.
Lidya says that this raise has brought a change to the company’s leadership structure, which sees Eksin leaving Lidya to pursue other projects and Kehinde taking over as the sole CEO.
In 2019, Lidya announced that it was setting up lending operations in Poland and the Czech Republic with the aim of disbursing over $1.1 billion in loans over five years. However the Eastern European activities only fully started in march and April 2020. Since then, Lidya claims it has disbursed over $3 million to SMEs in the two countries. To date, the company has disbursed over 25,000 loans and claims to have more than a 90% customer repeat rate.
Speaking on the investment, Alitheia Capital co-founder and managing director Tokunboh Ishmael said, “Lidya is tackling the fundamental challenge of providing access to credit for dynamic small and growing businesses that otherwise have limited options for financing working capital to scale their businesses in Africa and Europe. Alitheia Capital and Goodwell are pleased to be backing a team whose mission aligns with our objective of driving growth and social impact by enabling access and inclusion to finance and financial services.”
