Nigerian fintech, Sudo Africa has raised $3.7 million in pre-seed funding round led by Global Founders Capital a San Francisco based venture capitalist firm.
According to the Chief Operating Officer of the startup, Kabir Shittu, the funding would be used to expand the company outside Lagos to other African markets.
Other participating firms include Picus Capital, LoftyInc Capital, Rallycap Ventures, Kepple Africa, Berrywood Capital, ZedCrest and Suya Ventures. Some African fintech founders such as Olugbenga Agboola CEO of Flutterwave, Ham Serunjogi CEO of Chipper Cash, and Odunayo Eweniyi, Co-founder of PiggyVest invested during the funding round.
What they are saying
The COO stated that the decision to expand is not borne out of the need to compete with other companies but rather out of necessity. “Our concern right now is to expand into other African countries. So we’re looking at before the end of this year, we’ll probably be in three or four more African countries,” he said.
According to the founders of the Kaduna-based fintech, they came up with the idea for Sudo Africa while they were trying to issue cards for their previous startups and encountered some difficulties.
CEO Aminu Bakori also stated that the company went to Nigerian banks to get them to issue them cards, they got the cards but the cards not only took a lot of time but none of them functioned because the bank wasn’t able to provide any APIs for them to either manage the cards or even control its usage.
About Sudo Africa
The company was founded by Aminu Bakori and Kabir Shittu in 2020 as a card issuing API fintech.
According to its founders, one of the best features of Sudo Africa is that they take less time to issue cards. The company’s infrastructure allows itself and any developer or merchants that use its platform to not only issue virtual and physical cards to their customers, but also allow businesses to regulate and program the cards they have been issued to suit their taste, desires and to function in the exact way they want.
This means that if a company or business decides to use Sudo Africa to issue cards for their business, even if they’re not using the card directly they can control how the cards are used by either employees, staff or associates. Before a Sudo card is used, an API is called every time to decide whether to approve or deny that transaction in real time