Board appoints interim CEO
Kepple Africa Ventures, the Japanese Venture Capital firm, has announced that it will revoke its investment in Kenyan fintech startup Wapi Pay. The VC firm was one of the investors in Wapi Pay’s recent $2,2 million funding.
This comes after reports emerged that Wapi Pay founders, Eddie Ndichu and Paul Ndichu, were reportedly accused of assaulting two women in Nairobi’s Ole Sereni Hotel.
Takahiro Kanzaki who is a co-founder at the VC firm said: ‘’In light of the alleged assault on women by the founders of our portfolio company Wapi Pay, we Kepple Africa Ventures hereby announce that we have zero tolerance on such conduct and announce that we will relinquish all the rights of our investment stake in Wapi Pay.’’ General Partner Satoshi Shinad said in a tweet that has also been published on its website.
In its response to the alleged assault, Wapi Pay said that the video circulating on social media did not depict the true event that transpired.
“Wapi Pay founders Paul and Eddie want to use this medium to express their deepest regrets to the incident that occurred,” the statement read.
”As one of the leading Kenyan-founded startup companies, focusing on delivering financial services innovation to the mass market, Wapi Pay is built on, and practices, a culture of respect to employees and customers and does not tolerate any form of discrimination or encourage any form of gender-based violence,” the statement further read.
Despite the reassurances from the co-founders, it has not obviously gone down well with its board and investors. This warranted the decision of the fintech’s board to ask for both co-founders to step aside with immediate effect to allow investigations to take their course.
According to another statement released by the board of directors, it commits to concluding investigations within 30-days and appointed Elizabeth Kariuki, the current Chief Operating Officer as the new Chief Executive Officer.
