Grace Ashiru
A pre-series C investment round for the Nigerian fintech firm TeamApt, which provides commercial payments and banking systems, raised more than $50 million successfully.
Light rock and BII were also participants in the investment, led by QED Investors, a venture capital firm in the United States focusing on the financial technology industry, and Novastar Ventures.
The company claims to use the investment to expand its lending services, enter new markets, and bring financial joy to more people across Africa by digitizing the continent’s economy.
We always take an opportunity-based approach to our fundraising efforts and want to ensure a favorable market context. The company’s cash requirements and the investor profile align with our strategic growth aspirations. Due to the overall cautious nature of the market climate, we were not in the process of actively fundraising and did not need the money because our business was already profitable. Still, we were excited to take advantage of the opportunity to bring on a new prominent investor.
When we were still operating off of our savings, we designed our goods so that they would have favorable unit economics right from the start. This has allowed us to maintain a healthy profit margin.
Because of this, we are now among the exclusive group of cash-flow-positive companies that are seeing rapid growth. Even though we’re growing at triple-digit rates year after year, we’re also making more money,” he said.
TeamApt is a company specializing in developing business solutions, digital banking, payments infrastructure, and business solutions.
The company runs one of Nigeria’s largest business payment and banking platforms. Its Moniepoint and Monnify products handle $100 billion worth of transactions every year.
There are currently 400,000 small and medium-sized enterprises in Nigeria that Moniepoint supports. These firms are given access to various capabilities that help them manage their operations, such as working capital. Loans for business expansion and management tools such as expense management (business payment cards), insurance, accounting, and bookkeeping solutions,
Eniolorunda stated that the new fundraising round would allow TeamApt to expand its lending offers. Because the parent firm continues to lend from the microfinance bank subsidiary’s balance sheet, the company’s loan portfolio is still relatively modest.
However, to have access to loan facilities, the company intends to utilize several lending agreements in the coming years as its portfolio grows. These partnerships will include banks, development finance institutions, and securitization structures.
Gbenga Ajayi, a partner at QED Investors and the head of Africa for the company, stated that he was “glad to bring Africa to QED and QED to Africa.”Investing in TeamApt seems like the best approach to break into the African market that I can think of at this point. Over the previous five years, Tosin and his colleagues have painstakingly constructed an outstanding payment and distribution network over the entirety of Nigeria. They will be able to continue to build up an even more extensive network due to their robust and positive unit economics, as well as their intense emphasis on the needs of their customers.
