Duplo, a business-to-business payment platform that makes it easier for African businesses of all sizes to pay each other, has raised $4.3 million in seed funding to launch new products and expand into new business verticals in Nigeria. The seed funding round included Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Tribe Capital, Commerce Ventures, Basecamp Fund, and Y Combinator. Oui Capital also re-invested after participating in the previous round.
Duplo has gained popularity with FMCG distributors and finance teams of midsize and enterprise organizations since its launch in January 2022, helping them to digitize and streamline the way money flows between them and their business partners. FMCG distributors can use the Duplo platform to onboard retailers in their network, making it easier for them to receive payments digitally and gain real-time insights on company performance. They can also automate payments to vendors, manufacturers, and suppliers, allowing them to deal in larger numbers with instant payments.
For finance teams, Duplo’s end-to-end solution automates the back office processes of generating and processing invoices, receiving and approving bills, collecting and disbursing funds, and completing account reconciliation. Duplo works seamlessly with all major accounting and ERP platforms such as Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, QuickBooks and Sage, and payments processed through Duplo are automatically synced with these platforms in real-time. With Duplo, businesses can cut time spent on admin tasks such as account reconciliation by up to 50 percent and reduce payment-related costs by up to 85 percent. In the last 3 months, the company has increased the number of businesses on its platform by 1000%. Total Payment Volume has also increased by 4200% in the last 5 months.
According to Yele Oyekola, CEO and co-founder of Duplo, “we have seen a lot of innovation in consumer payments in Africa in recent years but business-to-business payments have largely stayed the same. We strongly believe that there is a great opportunity to catalyze growth and maximize business opportunities across the continent by removing the bottlenecks that hinder the seamless flow of money between businesses and we are excited to have raised funding from this exciting group of investors to deliver this much-needed transformation”.
Peter Oriaifo, Principal at Oui Capital said, “The Duplo team has built an incredible suite of products that improve how businesses make and receive payments from each other, and the growth that the company has experienced since our initial pre-seed investment in 2021 has been nothing short of impressive. It is for this reason that we are excited to back Duplo once more.”