A Japanese corporate venture capital (CVC) has signed an early-stage deal to back a Nigeria-based financial services technology company that is part-owned by Tiger Global Management.
Credit Saison’s CVC, Saison Capital, has backed an $8.4 million seed funding round in Kippa.
Saison is joined on the deal by Goodwater Capital, Ten13 VC, Rocketship VC and Crestone VC.
Other investors in the deal include VentureSouq, Horizon Partners and Vibe Capital.
Credit Saison is a financial services company with a market capitalization of approximately $2.3 billion (¥326.75 billion) as of September 2022.
Kippa is being backed on track record, with the company having grown to provide services to 500,000 merchants across 774 local governments in Nigeria, according to the company.
The company is also being backed on growth prospects, with Nigeria having approximately 49.3 million small and medium sized businesses, according to Kippa.
Kosuke Mori [pictured] is managing partner at Saison Capital.
Barret Parkman is vice president at Goodwater Capital.
Stew Glynn is managing partner at Ten13.
Anand Rajaraman is partner at Rocketship.
Hernando Rubio is venture partner at Credstone.
Sonia Seth-Gokhale is managing partner at VentureSouq.
Sandy Kory is managing director at Horizon Partners.
Ankur Nagpal is founding partner at Vibe Capital.
Tiger Global previously backed Kippa. in 2021, investing in a $3.2 million pre-seed funding round into the company.
The investor was joined on the deal by Entrée Capital, Alter Global and Rally Cap Ventures.
Sriram Krishnan, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz also participated in the round as an individual investor. Andreessen Horowitz is a US-based investor with $19.2 billion in assets under management (AuM), as of 2021.
Babalola Ogundeyi chief executive officer (CEO) at Kuda, a Nigeria-based financial services technology company was also in the round as an individual player.
Raffael Johnen, chief executive officer at German-based financial services technology company, Auxmoney was also in the pre-seed round as an individual player.
Edward Suh, principle at US-based venture capital firm Goodwater Capital also participated in the round as an individual investor.
Sajid Rahman, general partner at Indonesia-based venture capital firm MyAsiaVC was also in the pre-seed deal as an individual investor.
Headquartered in Lagos, Kippa is a software company that offers an online financial management and bookkeeping platform for corporate clients across Nigeria.
Kippa enables clients to keep track of their daily income and expense transactions, create invoices and receipts and manage inventories.
The company also enables its clients keep track of debtors and send automated reminders to them.
Created in 2021, Kippa is headed by founder and chief executive officer Kennedy Ekezie and employs approximately 70 people as of 2022.