Orda Africa has secured a $3.4 million seed round which was co-led by Quona Capital and FinTech Collective with participation from Far Out Ventures and Outside VC, angel investors Doneci Kone and Julian Shapiro, and follow-on investment from Norrsken Foundation, Lofty Inc Capital and Enza Capital.
The startup, founded in 2020 by Guy Futi, Fikayo Akinwale, Mark Edomwande, Kunle Ogungbamila, and Namir El-Khouri, helps restaurants to manage their business processes online, by integrating local payments, logistics, inventory management as well as business analytics. Restaurants on the platform are also enabled to accept and process orders from food delivery platforms like Jumia Food, and Bolt Food; as well as social media channels such as WhatsApp.
Orda’s target market is the African restaurant industry, where many small restaurants rely on paper receipts and reconciliations which the startup intends to give an alternative method of operating food businesses.
The company announced a $1.1 million pre-seed in January 2022 and has since expanded its client base to over 600 restaurants in Nigeria and Kenya and it currently processes over 500% more weekly orders for its customers.
“From day one, Orda has been focused on building solutions for small and medium-sized restaurants. These businesses operate with slim profit margins and the power of Orda’s software and financial solutions can catapult their business. Our goal is to provide end-to-end solutions that help them optimize their operations so they become more prosperous,” according to Guy Futi, Orda’s CEO and co-founder.
Following the progress in the last 12 months, Orda believes it has hit product-market fit, evidenced by the rapid rate of adoption, rising referrals, and increasing ease of onboarding new restaurants.
“We have a huge backlog of restaurants to onboard and we’re confident of reaching 1,000 active restaurants within the next three months. Our vendors love our solution and we do a good job of listening to feedback and incorporating that into the new features we roll out. We do our very best to always centre the restaurant’s experience at the heart of our operations,” Afua Ahwoi, Head of Operations at Orda, said.
With the recently completed fundraise, Orda has vertical expansion in sight, as it looks to improve its payments, credit and lending solutions, helping customers unlock even more value from their businesses.
“Focusing solely on restaurants has given us deeper insights into how they are run and what their financial behaviour is. We believe we can accurately predict when a restaurant needs a cash injection or a small loan and are looking to work with partners who can provide those services,” Futi added.
