Nigerian Tech Startup Raises N325.99million from Three Investors
- Three venture capitals provided N325.99 million for the Nigerian startup to help debtors resolve their debt
- BFREE was established to assist borrowers clear their debt through technology which will help debtors structure their repayment
- The money which was raised will be used to expand operation across Nigeria or other countries as its customers' growth hit over 300,000
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Credit management startup, BFREE, has raised N325.99 million from three venture capitals in its bid to assist debtors to repay their loans and improve their credit score among financial institutions.
Nigeria-based Beta. Ventures led the funding round, while Launch Africa Ventures and GreenHouse Capital joined the fundraising to support Chukwudi Enyi, Moses Nmor and Julian Flosbach - the founders of BFREE - in their quest to resolve debt issues between creditors and borrowers.
BFREE already has over 300,000 customers since it began operation amid the COVID-19 outbreak last year. The setup of the company came at a period of financial distress which saw debtors default on loans or miss their due date.
It has assisted customers in clearing their debt through BFREE's self-servicing solutions, which include machine learning algorithms. This has led to high debt recovery for creditors.
The N325.99 million raised in seed round funding will be spent on operation expansion. According to Ike Eze of Beta Ventures, his firm invested in BFREE because the founders are experienced in lending.
Source: UGC
Eze said the founders are solving problems faced by individuals, and this makes the Nigerian startup essential to the credit market. He made this known in a report by Disrupt Africa, adding that the services of BFREE deepen credit in Africa and any other emerging market.
Commenting on the market where it operates, Flosbach said:
"Inefficiency and lack of transparency of collections are not unique challenges to digital lenders and also not peculiar to Nigeria.
"We see significant use cases among other customer verticals with digital products such as commercial and microfinance banks, embedded finance solutions, like buy-now-pay-later, credit cards, and even tax payments at some point.
"Basically, everywhere where value is owed, our solutions can be deployed. Here, we also don’t just build a solution for Nigeria, but a solution that can be potentially used in every emerging market with a challenging infrastructure for collections."
Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported earlier that China has banned the use of cryptocurrency to make payments following the drop in bitcoin price which has cost the investors millions of dollars.
China had previously ban cryptocurrency trading from operating, which led to the exit of many exchanges, but the country didn't stop its people from holding bitcoin, a policy familiar with that of Nigeria.
It was gathered that the ban was directed by the National Internet Finance Association of China, the China Banking Association, and the Payment and Clearing Association of China.
Source: Legit.ng
