Pivo, a Nigerian Fintech Startup, Acquires $2m in Seed Funding to Offer Financial Services to SMEs in Africa.
Female-led Nigerian fintech startup, Pivo, has closed a $2 million seed round that included participation from Precursor Ventures, Vested World, Y Combinator, FoundersX, and Mercy Corp Ventures.
Founded in July 2021 by Nkiru Amadi-Emina and Ijeoma Akwiwu, Pivo provides financial services – credit, payments, and expense management – to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) vendors within large manufacturing supply chains.
Since its inception, Pivo currently has 300 active SMEs and 10 ecosystem partners and has disbursed over $3 million through Pivo Capital and transacted more than $4 million through Pivo Business accounts. Pivo’s monetization strategy is based on fees for specific transactions and interest on loans. Currently, Pivo offers two products: Pivo Capital, which provides financing to supply chain SMEs, and Pivo Business, which offers bank accounts and features like e-invoicing, bulk payments, and bill payment.
According to Amadi-Emina, the startup’s CEO, Pivo Business, a new product launched after closing its seed round, has seen tremendous success, with transaction volumes growing 400% between April and September 2022.
“After our pre-seed raise of $550,000 early in Q1 of this year, we launched a new product, Pivo Business, with features that supply chain SMEs can use to achieve better cash flow.” The transaction volume of Pivo Business accounts grew by over 400% between April and September. With this funding, we intend to build on existing products and develop solutions for supply chain anchors.”
“There will be new product development as well to improve transaction management and payment reconciliation. Cash flow management is one of the biggest challenges you find in supply chains, and while we’re already tackling it with existing products, there’s a lot more we plan to do,” she said.
Speaking on the investment, Daniel Block, investment principal at Mercy Corps Ventures, said, “When we initially invested last year, we believed that the founders’ deep logistics industry expertise and commitment to unattended supply chain SMEs would enable Pivo to rapidly carve out a deep moat in the competitive fintech lending space. As Pivo launches additional products to graduate from a pure fintech lender to a full-fledged financial services platform, we are excited to see the company deliver a full suite of financial services specifically designed for the needs of the unattended supply-chain sector SMEs they serve.”
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