Nigerian fintech Okra Secures $1m investment from TLcom

• Nigerian fintech startup Okra has secured a pre-seed investment of $1 million from TLcom Capital, a venture capital (VC) firm based in Nairobi and London.
• The startup said it has the potential to onboard new customers in less than 24 hours, and since last month has seen a 175 per cent rise in demand
• TLcom partner Andreata Muforo noted that Ashiru Jituboh has more than 20 programming languages expertise and has collaborated with many Fortune 500 companies.

Nigerian fintech startup Okra has secured a pre-seed investment of $1 million from TLcom Capital, a venture capital (VC) firm based in Nairobi and London.

Okra, which was launched in January, provides a secure platform and mechanism for sharing real-time financial information between consumers, applications and banks.

It claims to have built the first API in Africa to access real-time financial information from a bank account through any web or mobile application.

The startup was founded in June last year by Fara Ashiru Jituboh, formerly Fidelity Investments and Canva, who according to the company’s LinkedIn profile, was joined by fellow co-founder David Peterside from UCML Capital and Fashion Map.

READ ALSO: SA Startup Payment24 Secures Standard Bank Investment

The startup said it has the potential to onboard new customers in less than 24 hours, and since last month has seen a 175 per cent rise in demand as more businesses digitise their services because of Covid-19 and are looking to grow across Africa.

Ashiru Jituboh made it known in a statement: “Our thesis is simple — financial innovation cannot exist without the proper infrastructure, which is data.

Essentially, how far the African fintech sector can grow is intrinsically tied to the success of infrastructure like Okra and with our core market in Nigeria, we’re opening the door to another level of innovation in Africa’s largest market.”

“There are approximately 125 million banks accounts in Nigeria alone — but over the course of the next two years, we will see that figure rise exponentially, which presents huge opportunities for growth.”

“Our role within this is to deliver ease, speed and transparency to key players within the fintech space so they can get back to driving our continent forward.”

The investment in Okra marks TLcom’s first venture in the fintech sector and Andreata Muforo, partner at TLcom, will join the board of Okra as part of the transaction. Ido Sum, also a VC company member, will enter as an observer on the Panel.

TLcom partner Andreata Muforo noted that Ashiru Jituboh has more than 20 programming languages expertise and has collaborated with many Fortune 500 companies.

“She leads by example and we have seen her and David build a really exciting business, in a little under a year, we’re excited to help them grow further,” said Muforo.