Lidya, a Nigerian fintech and lending startup, has announced that it has raised $8.3 million pre-Series B funding round led by Alitheia Capital led through its uMunthu Fund.
Other investors joined the funding round include Bamboo Capital Partners, Accion Venture Lab and Flourish Ventures.
This takes the total investment raised by the startup to $16.5 million having previously secured $1.3 million in 2017 and $6.9 million in 2018.
Lidya will use the investment to grow its lending operations for small and medium businesses across its markets and expand its teams in Lagos, Prague and Warsaw. A percentage of the funds will go to supporting lines of credit.
Founded in 2016 by Tunde Kehinde and Ercin Eksin who has now left the company to pursue other endeavours, Lidya is a financial services platform that improves access to credit and finance across frontier and emerging markets starting with Nigeria.
It uses mobile-first technology with a strong customer experience and proprietary credit scoring algorithms to help small & medium businesses open an account online in 15 minutes, manage funds, and access credit needed to grow their businesses and plan their futures. It currently has offices in Nigeria, Czech Republic and Poland.
To date, the company has disbursed over 25,000 loans and claims to have more than a 90% customer repeat rate.
Speaking on the investment, Alitheia Capital co-founder and managing director Tokunboh Ishmael said, “Lidya is tackling the fundamental challenge of providing access to credit for dynamic small and growing businesses that otherwise have limited options for financing working capital to scale their businesses in Africa and Europe. Alitheia Capital and Goodwell are pleased to be backing a team whose mission aligns with our objective of driving growth and social impact by enabling access and inclusion to finance and financial services.”
