Nigeria’s Indicina, focused on building API-driven credit infrastructure for Africa has raised $3 million in a seed fund round led by Target Global with participation from Greycroft and RV Ventures. Ricardo Schaefer, Partner at Target Global will also join the board.
The startup will deploy the fund to accelerate its expansion into other African markets. It will also enable Indicina to reinforce its key product offerings, build more products for Consumer credit recommendation, and bolster its infrastructure.
Africa has a poor credit infrastructure and low-risk innovation. Only 11% of its population have their credit information recorded by private credit bureaus vs 16% in East Asia and 47% in Latin America. And among African banking customers, only 17% have consumer loans — less than half of those with a transaction product.
This massive consumer credit opportunity requires technology and credit risk innovation that most lenders currently don’t have. Our products enable a competitive digital offering backed by strong data and analytics capabilities for more efficient customer acquisition and risk assessment. Our enterprise customers are digitising customer journeys with greater speed, and our FinTech customers are leveraging our APIs for their embedded finance offerings.
Yvonne Johnson, CEO at Indicina said, “This new investment round will power all the workings of our next phase, and we’re excited to partner with an excellent group of investors.
Ricardo Schäefer, Partner at Target Global said “We are firm believers that access to credit is a core facet of financial inclusion and are excited to back Indicina, whose goal is to ensure that eligibility for loans will no longer be determined by incomplete creditworthiness assessments.”
The growth of digital financial services is accelerating on the continent, with non-bank players leading the charge (notably Telcos and FinTechs). This includes a maturing digital payment infrastructure and more open banking start-ups providing improved datasets for digital lending. Companies need to build increasingly innovative applications that leverage the data exhaust. Our architecture sits on top of customer data infrastructure providing deeper insights and allowing customers to go to market faster with more innovative products.
“Limited access to credit in Africa is a data problem, not a creditworthiness problem. We are unlocking opportunities by eliminating the complexity associated with accessing the data necessary to make underwriting decisions. We are excited about Indicina’s ability to expand the breadth of financial services available to consumers and businesses across Africa.” added Will Szczerbiak, Partner, Greycroft.
