Nigeria based Frain Technologies raises $473K in pre-seed funding to build Webhooks Infrastructure

Frain technologies, a Nigerian developer-tooling startup dedicated to building webhooks infrastructure has recently completed a $473k pre-seed round to build Webhooks infrastructure.

The pre-seed round, led by Rally Cap Ventures, also witnessed participation from Musha Ventures, Future Africa, Eric Idiahi, Aidi Ventures, Tomiwa Lasebikan, Prosper Otemuyiwa, Odunayo Eweniyi, Timi Ajiboye, Opeyemi  Awoyemi and several other angel investors. The round will enable Frain Technologies to take its flagship product, Convoy, to maturity both locally and globally.

Frain Technologies is a Nigerian-based developer tooling startup that was founded by SubomiOluwalana and Emmanuel Aina in 2021. The startup is reinventing the way products are built by designing tools for the product delivery value chain. Its flagship product, Convoy, is an open-source webhooks service that enables developers to push webhook events to their users. Since coming on stream early last year, Frain has helped notable businesses like Buycoins, Termii, GetWallets, Dojah to worry less about infrastructure and focus on building their API.

Frain started in February 2021, when Subomi Oluwalana, co-founder and CEO, quit his job as a backend developer at Tangerine Life, one of Nigeria’s leading fintech startups, to build APIs for fintech. Alongside co-founder and COO, Emmanuel  Aina, the team tried to sell APIs to startups for several months without much success. While tweaking their solution to be more commercially viable, the team realized that webhooks were a ubiquitous problem faced by most startups looking to build APIs.

This realization resulted in the creation of Convoy — a cloud-native webhook service that allows developers to push webhook events to their users in a matter of minutes. Webhooks are a core infrastructure component for most API businesses like Stripe, Twillo, and Paystack.

For the non-technical, Webhooks has become a critical component of modern APIs. It is technically the glue that makes APIs work. Essentially, a failed webhooks event has a direct customer impact. A failed event from Paystack means a customer won’t receive value for their purchase on Domino’s while the customer has received a debit alert. It means a Piggyvest customer will not see their top-up while the customer has received a debit alert.

Since its launch, Convoy has received a great reception from the local community, with a number of companies using it in production. Most notably are Buycoins, Termii, GetWallets, Dojah, and a few others.

Explaining why Convoy was built, cofounder and COO, Emmanuel Aina said, “At Frain, we’re specifically passionate about open-source and developer tools. We’re unlike most companies in our space. Convoy can be used by any developer anywhere in the world, building a product that requires webhooks.”

Following the success of the pre fund raising, the CEO of Frain, Subomi explained that Frain will continue to invest in the development of Convoy and develop more tools for developers. “We are excited to have received the support and endorsement of these investors and we look to grow and expand our product offerings in the coming months, while also increasing the number of clients that we cater to. We believe these are interesting times for Frain Technologies. We are super passionate about open-source and developer tools and championing a new crop of startups building global dev tools. We are building the next HashiCorp, GitLab, GitHub out of Lagos, Nigeria.” He said.

Lead investor, Rally Cap Ventures stated that it was very clear upon meeting the founders of the business that they were building an important tool and Rally Cap was pleased to invest. Hayden Simmons, Founder of Rally Cap Ventures said, “Rally Cap Ventures invests in core infrastructural API companies that enable fintech solutions to scale across emerging markets; immediately upon meeting Subomi and Emmanuel, it was clear that they’re deeply passionate experts, building in a critical space. After sharing with our portfolio companies, it was also clear their product is in high demand not just across Africa, but globally as well.”

For Frain, it is time to build for the world and not just for Africa, re-echoing the thoughts of one of its investors TimiAjiboye, who stated in his article, Build for the World. “There’s still a lot to be desired per our entire tech ecosystem but things are markedly different from how they were just 10 years ago. The barriers to deploying & sharing software have dropped dramatically. It’s time to build for the world and not Africa.”