Kuda announced, today, that it has raised a Series B round of funding to help it double down on new services for its customers in Nigeria and fuel its expansion into other African countries. This round of funding, however, was made at a valuation of $500 million.
Per Techcrunch, while commenting on the new funding round, Kuda’s CEO said “We’ve been doing a lot of resource deployment has been in our operational entity, in Nigeria. But now we are doubling down on the expansion and the idea is to build a strong team for the expansion plans for Kuda,”. “We still see Nigeria as an important market and don’t want to be distracted so don’t want to disrupt those operations too much. It’s a strong market and competitive. It’s one that we feel we need to have a stronghold on. So this funding is to invest in expansion and have more experience in the company with relation to expansion“, Babs concluded.
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Kuda was founded by Babs Ogundeyi and Mustapha Musty after they rebranded Kudimoney to Kudabank in 2019. The startup, since its rebranding, has tried to distinguish itself from other conventional/traditional banks in Nigeria, offering mobile-first, personalized, and cheaper banking services.
Kuda raised its first round in 2019 (a $1.6 million pre-seed round), it then closed $10 million in a seed round in 2020. Early this year, it closed a $25 million in Series A fund. So far, Kuda has raised a total of $91.6 million in venture capital funding.
Related Article: A Comprehensive List of Digital Banks in Nigeria
What Services Does Kuda Offer?
Kuda offers a wide range of banking services to its customers including interbank transfers, automated savings, free physical debit cards, bills and utility payments, and it recently added ‘loan and overdraft‘ to its collection of services.
In conclusion, it is interesting that Kuda is not the only known player in this space. We have seen other startups in recent years spring up all around Nigeria to offer similar solutions. Some very close competitors in that space include Chippercash, Vbank, Fairmoney, Cabon, Sparkle, among others
