Ugandan fintech, Numida has secured $12.3 million in a funding round. Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures led the round with $12.3 million with support from Breega, 4Di Capital, Launch Africa, Soma Capital, Y Combinator and MFS Africa. While Lendable Asset Management will provide the remaining $5 million in form of a debt facility.
Founded in 2015 by three Canadian Y Combinator graduates Mina Shahid, Catherine Denis and Ben Best, Numida supports semiformal micro and small businesses with digital working capital loans of between $100 to $5000 disbursed via mobile money.
Numida plans to expand into other African markets like Nigeria, Ghana, Egyptian and Kenya with a target of extending more loans to an additional 10,000 businesses to hit its 40,000 targets within the next 18 months.
Numida in 2021 raised $2.3 million in seed funding to drive its expansion goal and improve on its infrastructure.
CEO and co-founder, Mina Shahid in an interview with Insider said, “Our initial process was simple: How do we provide the best form of working capital to excluded people?
“It’s important because these people have been forgotten by traditional financial services and the major challenge for economic development is financing for businesses.”
So far, Numida has advanced more than $20 million in funding since 2021 and is building its capacity for future growth.
According to Shahid, the company’s teams are split between Kampala, Uganda, and various remote locations on the west coast of the US. Funding will go towards further hiring on Numida’s product development team in Uganda alongside a CFO and potentially a head of credit risk.
“It’s been a fascinating experience building a tech product for people who have never used a computer before. Everyone can understand an interface in the valley but we’ve had to unlearn what a user interface is and have spent a lot of time on improving our UX and customer journey,” Shadid added.
