- Accion CEO Michael Schlein said, “Agents and micro businesses are often the main way that underserved populations in Africa and Asia access financial services, but they face massive liquidity gaps that make it harder to serve their communities. Kuunda provides solutions for agents and micro merchants that enable them to grow their businesses while also helping their communities grow and thrive.”
Kuunda provides liquidity to the informal sector through its liquidity API, and proprietary credit scoring algorithms, to generate behavioral and transactional borrowing profiles. The startup specializes in real-time, transactional-based lending solutions and plans to use this seed round to scale up operations in Tanzania and Pakistan, and launch partnerships in Uganda, Malawi, DRC, Zambia, Mozambique, Nigeria & Egypt.
Kuunda, a Mauritius-domiciled financial technology (finech) company, has completed its seed funding round with USD 2.25 million in new investment, led by Accion Venture Lab, a unit of US-based nonprofit Accion. The other investors include FINCA Ventures, Future Africa, Greenhouse Capital, Kepple Africa Ventures, Launch Africa, Magic Fund, Mercy Corps Ventures and Seedstars.
The funding is slated to boost Kuunda’s existing operations – which span Tanzania and Pakistan – and allow it to expand into Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia during the remainder of 2022 and 2023. The firm’s offerings are: (1) Hapa Cash, which provides mobile money agents, merchants and consumers with one-day loans to complete transactions such as payments as well as purchases of fuel and airtime; and (2) Kazi Cash, which offers retailers and mobile money agents loans with terms up to 14 days. Kuunda, whose name means “create” in Swahili, was established in 2018.
Accion CEO Michael Schlein said, “Agents and micro businesses are often the main way that underserved populations in Africa and Asia access financial services, but they face massive liquidity gaps that make it harder to serve their communities. Kuunda provides solutions for agents and micro merchants that enable them to grow their businesses while also helping their communities grow and thrive.”
Accion created Accion Venture Lab in 2011 to serve as its “seed-stage investment arm.” The mission of the investment vehicle is to support “technology and [other] new approaches that help underserved people and small businesses benefit from the world’s formal economy.” The majority of Accion Venture Lab’s investees are in microfinance and fintech. It typically invests USD 500,000 in early-stage startups. As of June 2022, its portfolio consists of 55 enterprises.
Founded in 1961, Accion is a nonprofit that seeks to alleviate poverty by offering services such as microenterprise loans and business training. The organization has 110 partner microfinance institutions (MFIs) providing financial services to entrepreneurs in 50 countries in Africa, the Americas and Asia. As of 2020, Accion reports total assets of USD 439 million. The NGO’s subsidiaries are Accion Global Advisory Solutions, Accion Global Investments, Accion Frontier Investments, Accion Venture Lab and the Center for Financial Inclusion.
