Orda, a Nigerian restaurant management startup, announced that it has raised $3.4 million in a seed funding round to build and scale out its payment feature, expand its restaurant network and enter into new markets in its pan-African expansion drive.
Adding this new fund to the $1.1 million dollars raised in January this year, this brings total funds raised to date to $4.5 million.
This seed funding round was co-led by Quona Capital and New York-based FinTech Collective. Other participants in this round include existing ones such as LoftyInc Capital, Enza Capital and Norrsken Foundation, as well as new venture capital firms like Outside VC and Far Out Ventures.
According to Kofoworola Agbaje, senior investment associate at Quona Capital on why her firm is backing the food tech, “When a restaurant owner moves from pen and paper to a fully automated digital platform, it’s incredibly empowering. Suddenly they have insights available to them that can improve their productivity and margins, enabling them to grow their businesses. A solution like Orda can have an outsized impact on small and medium-sized restaurants and the livelihoods of those who operate them.”
Orda, currently present in Nigeria and Kenya, provides an operating system to power an entire food business. This helps the business process orders, accept payments, connect to logistic providers, engage with customer and much more. It currently boasts of serving 600 vendors and is looking at increasing this number to 1000 before the end of Q1, 2023.
Chief executive officer Guy Futi in an interview with TechCrunch said that the company processes over 50,000 orders weekly for its vendors, 5x what it recorded as of this January, with its gross merchandise value (GMV) and revenue increasing 30% month-on-month. “We’re seeing fast-paced growth in Nigeria and Kenya with a retention rate of above 95%,” Futi added.
Futi says that this new funds will also allow Orda add more functionalities to its platform, especially as it seeks to provide lending and payments for its customers. The platform already processes payments for 10% of its vendors, and may begin a major rollout by Q2 next year.
As mentioned earlier, Orda wants to build and scale its payment feature with this new funds. It alos intends to expand its network of restaurants and enter into South Africa and much later, Côte d’Ivoire. The company has beefed up its leadership team for this newxt growth phase, recruiting a new head of operations and strategy, Afua Ahwoi, and a new head of growth, Modesola Osasomi.
.
