OkHi, a smart addressing startup, announced that it has secured a $1.5 million extension to scale its operations across Africa. Coupled with $1.5 million raised earlier, this brings total seed funds raised to $3 million.
Investors in this seed extension include Chapel Hill Denham, Flutterwave’s founder and executives and EXFI, a syndicate of ex-Googlers. They join current investors such as Betatron, Founders factory Africa and Interswitch Group. By virtue of the investment by Chapel Hill Denham, CEO Bolaji Balogun will join Okhi’s board.
Related Story: Interswitch Partners OkHI to Launch the Smart Addressing System in Nigeria
Founded by Timbo Drayson, OKHI was founded in Kenya in 2014 to provide digital address verification to financial services, tackling a problem space that is holding back growth and stifling access to credit for millions of Africans. Okhi says it is on a mission to enable the 4 billion people without an address to ‘be included’.
OkHi’s smart addressing technology makes it easy for financial services to verify their customer’s addresses through their smartphone, replacing the need for utility bills or physical visits. Drayson claims that it is the only smart address verification service in the world with this smartphone feature.
Okhi intends to use this raise to increase its staff strength in the engineering, sales, products departments in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya and United Kingdom
Drayson says its difference from the other competitors is that Okhi focuses on addressing people, not places.
“I think a straightforward way to try and understand the difference is that we focus on addressing people and not places. And what I mean by that is that a lot of addressing businesses or technology essentially provide a way for someone to find a building or a place, but they don’t know who’s inside it,” he said.
“And the core differentiator of what we’re doing is that we fundamentally are giving people these verified addresses. And that is something that no one else in the world is doing and is a core differentiator and the reason why we talk about the importance of addressing people and not places.” he adds
