UGANDA – ChapChap, a Ugandan fintech startup that creates reliable financial profiles for MSMEs, has secured a funding round from Nordic Impact Funds to accelerate its commercial growth and social impact creation.
“We are very excited to start out 2022 with this capital injection to accelerate our expansion within and beyond the Ugandan market,” said Emmanuel Emodek, co-founder and managing director of ChapChap.
“We are already servicing more than 20,000 MSMEs in Uganda. This injection is to facilitate digital capacity and financial inclusion for a million customers.”
Founded in 2016 by Emmanuel Emodek and James Alituhikya, together with their former primary school teacher Monica Asiimwe Kiconco, ChapChap aims to empower small and medium sized enterprises by giving them access to digital financial tools and resources to help them scale.
The startup helps MSMEs formalise aspects of their business using its Android app, which allows small shops to start operating mobile money agency business, track all transactions that occur in the store, and build a credit profile on the MSMEs.
“We are extremely proud of this investment. It has a strong focus on small and often women-owned businesses, who can professionalise and expand their businesses thanks to ChapChap,” said Lisbeth Stausholm, the firm’s founder and managing partner.
The investment transaction was conducted via the Investure – Impact Exchange, which matches impact projects in developing countries with a global pool of investors.
Investure is an impact exchange working to bridge the excessive funding gap in developing markets. Its blockchain based solution eliminates investment barriers through digitalization of private market transactions, asset servicing and creating liquidity through a secondary market.
Last year, the company was selected in the Africa Business Heroes (ABH) , a not-for-profit platform that was established to strengthen the African entrepreneur ecosystem by identifying, telling the stories of, training, and awarding grant-funding to 100 Business Heroes across Africa over the next 10 years. It is supported by the Jack Ma Foundation.
Nordic Impact Funds invests in early to mid-stage companies with proven impact and profitability that are in the process of scaling their business model. The firm applies a gender lens to all investments, and likes to be an active partner to companies it invests in.
Through its Nordic Impact Investments fund, they have so far made 3 investments in East Africa focused on building resilience in underserved communities.
The round was facilitated by Investure – Impact Exchange, a blockchain based technology platform that facilitates an end-to-end investment process, including a structured data-room, investor matchmaking, digital signatures for legal documents and later asset servicing and secondary market trading.
