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Funding Pula: Insuretech Startup Closes $6M Series A Funding to Scale Up Business Across Africa 0 SharesShareTweetSharePin The African Insuretech service provider, Pula, has recently closed a US$6 million Series A funding round led by TLcom Capital and had participation from Women’s World Banking. It specializes in digital as well as agric insurance to derisk smallholder farmers across Africa. This new round of investment to the insuretech startup will be used to scale up operations in the company’s existing 13 markets across Africa. Pula has so far impacted over 4.3 million farmers on the continent and the new funding will help push its expansion into Asia to power resilience and profitability for Asian smallholder farmers. Pula was launched by Rose Goslinga and Thomas Njeru in 2015, to design and deliver innovative agricultural insurance and digital products to help smallholders farmers improve their farming practices, endure climate risks and bolster their incomes. This has become necessary because for smallholder farmers in emerging markets, the traditional method of calculating insurance through farm visits is often expensive, meaning they are often neglected from financial protection against climate risks.

“Common investor wisdom is to stay in your market and dominate. This assumes that you are expanding on your own but we believe that by collaborating and partnering deliberately, Carbon and other tech companies can scale faster and build more enduring platforms,” Chijioke Dozie, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of Carbon, said. 

Nigerian fintech startup Carbon has set up a US$100,000 pan-African fund to address the lack of funding and support holding back entrepreneurs on the continent.Consumer lending platform Carbon, which rebranded in April as parent company OneFi continues to transition into being a full digital banking platform after raising US$5 million in debt funding and acquiring Nigerian payments startup Amplify, has been busy expanding its offering, and has also moved into new markets with a Kenyan launch.Its “Disrupt fund” is the first of its kind by an African fintech startup, and will invest up to US$10,000 per startup for five per cent equity. Portfolio companies will also be given access to Carbon’s API, allowing them to leverage Carbon’s growing customer base and innovative technology platform to get to market faster. Carbon expects the initiative to spark more collaboration and further investment that should drive growth across the ecosystem, and is accepting applications from companies with operations in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Egypt. Startups looking to apply for the fund must have a functioning product, be post-revenue, and be looking to operate in multiple countries. The fund has a wide investment mandate but target sectors include insurance, health and education.“There are many excellent companies across the continent looking for the kind of scale Nigeria offers and we are excited to partner with them to provide the support and financial investment they need. We are equally excited to expand beyond Nigeria and Kenya by working with a new generation of innovators across the continent and sharing our experience to tackle common obstacles to growth.”

Nigerian fintech startup Carbon has set up a US$100,000 pan-African fund to address the lack of funding and support holding back entrepreneurs on the continent.

AgroCenta has raised a total of $2.2M in funding over 4 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jan 29, 2021 from a Seed round.

FarmDrive, a Kenyan data analytics startup helping smallholder farmers in Africa access credit from local banks, has raised funding from the venture arm of Safaricom, the biggest communication company in East and Central Africa, Safaricom Spark Venture Fund.

Thanks to SnapScan the Feenix community can now make a monthly contribution to fund students.Feenix allows everyday people and businesses to donate what they can so students can graduate and actively participate in our economy. We believe that access to education should not be dependent on wealth. Driven by our community’s commitment to combat student-debt we were inspired to find the safest, easiest and most convenient way for the community to make donations on a monthly basis.  As a result, we have partnered with SnapScan! The innovative mobile payment application that allows funders to make donations quickly. Launched in 2013, SnapScan has changed the way we make payments-one snap at a time!With the snap of the unique Feenix QR code you can make an immediate donation. By scanning the code, you will be given the option to not only make a once-off donation, but also set up a recurring donation from as little as the cost of two coffees, the amount is up to you! Scan Now to start donating monthly.

These recurring SnapScan donations go into the Feenix Pool Fund, the collective fund made up of donations from different funders which is then allocated to students according to the B-BBEE scorecard. Preference is also given to students who are active and involved with Feenix. All funds are paid directly to the applicable universities on a semiannual basis or at the Trustees discretion.You can make a difference today! No need for cash, cards or EFTs. SnapScan enables you to make a simple and safe donation that will alleviate the impact of financial stress on students. The benefit of SnapScan donations means that you can make a donation from wherever you find yourself. You’ll be able to view your recurring donations on the SnapScan app and are free to cancel your monthly donation at any time ensuring that you have control over your contributions.So #JOINTHECROWD and make your donation today. When you donate to the Feenix Pool Fund, you support the vision for a society in which all are able to fulfil their potential regardless of wealth.

Nigerian fintech startup, Carbon, just announced that it has launched a $100,000 pan-African fund for startups.According to the company, the Carbon Disrupt Fund was set up to address the lack of funding and support holding back budding tech entrepreneurs on the continent. It will invest up to $10,000 per startup in exchange for a 5% equity.Also, startups will have access to Carbon’s API, and leverage Carbon’s growing customer base and innovative technology platform, to get to market faster. Additionally, the fund will provide mentorship, access to Carbon’s customers and payment platform, as well as office space in Carbon’s Lagos offices.

Kiva has been awarded $2.5 million from the W-GDP Fund at USAID in an effort to identify innovative approaches to catalyze commercial investment for women’s economic empowerment and equality.

The Kiva Capital team will use this innovative funding to launch a comprehensive fund design and structuring process. This will include the development of an impact framework and a shared learnings platform.

JUMO offers a wide range of services to users in emerging markets via partnerships with other financial institutions

JUMO offers financial services infrastructure to third parties and has served over 15 million customers across countries, including Ghana, Kenya, Pakistan, and Tanzania, and it plans to use the fresh capital to launch new products and expand into new markets: It's set to launch in Bangladesh, India, Côte d'Ivoire, and Nigeria soon, per its website.

South African fintech JUMO scooped up $55 million in funding

JUMO builds its credit profiles using behavioral data gathered from mobile wallets, cell phones and transaction data.

JUMO is a transaction and predictive technology platform that partners with mobile network operators and banks to offer customers microloans and access to savings and insurance products. They are currently active in six markets – Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Pakistan – with plans to soon launch in India, Bangladesh, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. JUMO has helped disburse over $1.6 billion in funding to small and micro enterprises, and has helped connect over 15 million people to credit and savings services.

MoneyFellows has raised a total of $5.6M in funding over 5 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jun 22, 2020 from a Series A round.MoneyFellows is funded by 8 investors. Sawari Ventures and Partech are the most recent investors.

Founded by Peris Bosire and Rita Kimani, FarmDrive delivers productive digital loans and lay away savings products to smallholder farmers in Kenya, helping them grow their incomes and resilience.

Ghanaian fintech startup Zeepay has raised a US$940,000 seed funding round to enable it to continue to scale and roll out its services across the continent. Zeepay is focused on digital rails to connect digital assets such as mobile money wallets, cards, ATMs, bank accounts and digital tokens to international money transfer operators, payments, subscriptions, international airtime and refugee payments. 

Founded in 2015, AgroCenta is an online sales solution for smallholder farmers, with two offerings – supply chain platform AgroTrade, and financial inclusion service AgroPay.

Disrupt Africa reported yesterday AgroCenta was one of six African startups awarded non-equity funding by the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator. Though the startup’s co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Francis Obirikorang declined to disclose the breakdown of equity versus grant cash, Disrupt Africa can confirm that the GSMA input is worth around US$250,000. Obirikorang said the funds will be used to scale up AgroCenta’s operations in Ghana, while the GSMA grant is more specifically geared towards the AgroPay platform, which provides any smallholder farmer who has traded using AgroTrade with a financial statement they can use to get access to finance.

Each and every transaction done on the M-PESA platform is electronic and can therefore be monitored by Safaricom, which runs its own bank-grade anti-money laundering system. Even a cash-in or a cash-out operation has an electronic leg and is captured by the system. The Central Bank of Kenya gets regular reports on M-PESA transactions, as it does from other payment service providers.

Cash merchants are mainly super users, who resell their own working capital balances, with no more access to the M-PESA platform than any other customers, except that they have higher transaction limits.

At Pula, we are radically restructuring agricultural insurance, using technology to insure the previously unbanked, uninsured, untapped market of 1.5 billion smallholders worldwide. We work in nine countries across Africa and Asia, and in 2017 alone, we facilitated crop and livestock insurance cover to 611,000 farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Malawi.

Pula uses satellite data and farm yield measurements to understand how weather patterns affect a smallholder farmer’s yield, and uses this information to automate compensation in case of loss. The company also provides farmers with targeted agronomic advice via SMS messaging, helping them grow more from their existing landholdings.

Insurtech startup Pula announced today that it has closed a seed funding round to advance its efforts to provide insurance to smallholder farmers in Africa and South Asia.

UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) is pleased to announce that JUMO has won their Sprint4Women Design Competition for women’s financial inclusion in Zambia. JUMO was one of three finalists competing for a grant to roll-out digital financial services (DFS) solutions for the rural women of Zambia, alongside Fenix Zambia and Hobbiton Investments.

Kiva covers operating costs primarily through the generosity of our lenders, who can choose to make donations in addition to loans. We cover more than two-thirds of our operating costs through these voluntary donations from Kiva lenders. The remainder of our costs are covered through grants, donations from foundations and supporters and Field Partner service fees. This model of fundraising helps promote sustainability, by keeping our fundraising costs low and tapping into the power of the crowd to help cover our costs.

Kiva User Funds LLC is a separate entity that holds all funds belonging to Kiva users in FDIC-insured, escrow-like bank accounts. These low-yielding FBO accounts were set up to ensure Kiva users’ funds (meant for lending) are protected and fully separated from Kiva’s operational funds.

100% of your loans go to the field Kiva never takes a fee from lenders, which means 100% of the funds you lend on Kiva go toward supporting borrowers’ loans.