Trade Lenda Raises $520k Pre-Seed to Improve Access to Finance for Supply Chain MSMEs in Africa
According to Shina Arogundade COO, of Trade Lenda, “there are over 18 million MSMEs in Nigeria alone and over 100 million across emerging markets with a financing gap of over $5 trillion (over 60% of these figures are women)”
You’ve probably seen pictures of poverty in Africa leading to a lack of education, and trouble starting a business, or growing a business.
What you’ve not seen are the markets across the continent where millions of retailers go daily to contribute to the economy as per reports from IFC, they contribute to over 60% of the GDP and hardly get support from traditional institutions. They are the engine room of the economy but lack support. It’s not fair! This is large because of a lack of openness to innovation, rigid structures, and over confidence in existing frameworks.
Trade Lenda is helping these businesses, especially those in the supply value chain grow their businesses through technology. Leveraging technology such as machine learning, they are underlying a smart algorithm to digitize access for millions of MSMEs in Nigeria and soon across Africa.
According to Shina Arogundade, so far, they have provided credit to over 1,500 businesses with over $2million in disbursements with an average disbursement time of less than 6 hours. “Our technology allows us to underwrite requests quickly and efficiently from our users while limiting our risk exposure with non-performing loans less than 1%. Our goal is to help be that bridge for MSMEs to become big brands like Spar, ShopRite or even Walmart. At the end they would be able to add economic value to the society, create millions of jobs and better support their families.
The Fintech Startup, which is led by Adeshina Adewumi as CEO, Shina Arogundade as COO, and Oluwatosin Ayodele as CTO all from a finance, retail, and banking space are solid about their strategy and approach in tackling this global challenge facing MSMEs across Africa.
Entering the market in 2021, they decided to leverage their experience to tackle this challenge. “My mum was a retailer and growing up I had first-hand experience on how small businesses can be instrumental to shaping the future which I am part of today. This is one of the things that drives us, knowing fully well that we can support today with our collective experience of millions of women like my mum who would go on to support their families at home,” said Adeshina CEO.
The startup has now raised $520,000 from African-focused Investors like Sovereign Capital, ARM Labs, Expert Dojo, and a couple of Angel Investors in Nigeria.
Speaking on their projections for the year, Adeshina Stated that they grew 5x between 2021 and 2022 and are on track to doing 10x growth in revenue and impact from what they delivered in 2022.
