Kenyan fintech startup, Churpy, has raised $1 million in a seed funding round led by Unicorn Growth Capital.
Churpy will leverage the capital to set up hubs in some African countries such as Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa, facilitating its growth across the continent.
Other investors who participated in the round included Antler East Africa, Nairobi business angel network and some of Rally Cap’s LPs including senior executives from Stripe.
Part of its expansion plans into Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, comprises hiring more people to join in facilitating innovation in the hubs across the regions and also putting finances into product development to scale its offering.
Kennedy Mukuna and John Kiptum founded Churpy after they met at an accelerator programme by Antler East Africa, after which James Kanyangi joined the founding team. The company offers an integrated receivables management product that supports account reconciliation — for multiple ERPs — connectivity with multiple Bank APIs and an invoice payment marketplace.
The platform’s dashboard allows companies to see customers who owe them money, how efficient they are at collecting, how liquid they are, and other operational metrics. This allows the chief financial officers and their teams of accountants to get into more strategic roles of the business and follow up on those that haven’t been paid.
The startup is conducting a pilot programme with some of the major manufacturing and service enterprises in Kenya, including Unga Limited and Chandaria Industries
Having partnered with several banks, the company seeks to roll out the service as part of its strategy to unlock other services around accounts reconciliation. To begin extending financing to SMEs, Trade Development Bank has made available $15 million to Churpy — to be disbursed through its banking partners — for onward lending.
