Asilimia, a Kenyan company, has raised US$2 million in pre-seed funding
Asilimia, a digital infrastructure firm that connects African SMEs to the formal financial system, has raised US$2 million to expand its workforce, provide additional services, and enter new markets in East Africa. The firm received US$1 million in pre-seed capital from a diverse group of investors, including Fredrik Jung Abbou (co-founder of Kry and Lendo), Norrsken VC Impact Accelerator, and other famous European startups. Bpifrance and GreenTec Capital Partners helped it raise US$1 million in a financing round.
Asilimia was founded in 2017 by co-founders Tekwane Mwendwa
and Morgane Kablan to create Africa’s first informal financial infrastructure and connect Africa’s 150 million SMEs to formal banking system. Asilimia has created a cost-effective and simple-to-use digital platform for business owners to formalize payments, revenue collecting, and accounting, making it easier to track all of their operations in one location.
The startup is about to enter its next phase of development, which will include issuing loans to traders, providing greater assistance to a segment of the population that is sometimes overlooked and seen as high risk by traditional banking institutions. Asilimia co-founder and CEO, Tekwane Mwendwa (we are hiring) said “We have entered a phase where we are exploring ways in which we can extend the much-needed credit enabling traders to buy equipment or products to sustain their enterprises”
“Our focus over the last few years has been to build a solution that works, and this new funding will enable us to take it into new markets and impact the lives and livelihoods of more business owners,” Tekwane Mwendwa, CEO and co-founder of Asilimia, told Kenyan Wall Street.
According to data from The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, SMEs and informal businesses are the backbone of Kenya’s economy, contributing 33.8% to the country’s GDP and providing 83.4% of total employment, except for small-scale agriculture.
