Nigeria's Duplo Raises $4.3 Million in Seed Round For Expansion
Duplo, a Nigerian business-to-business (b2b) payment transaction startup which makes seamless payment possible within the African business ecosystem has raised a seed round of Four Million and Three Hundred Thousand US dollars ($4.3 Million ), and proposed to expand its business offering and launch new products.
The startup was Co-founded in September 2021, by Tunde and Akinnuwa and Yele Oyekola the initiative is focused on giving B2B organization access to an automated payment influx, harmonising business scale and developing a streamlined knowledge for business customers.
Duplo portrays itself as a “financial operating system for B2B organizations” where businesses can perform every payment transaction.
Duplo had previously announced a pre-seed round of One Million Three Hundred Thousand US dollars ($1.3 Million) it raised earlier in the year 2022, which came after they partook in the Y Combinator W22 batch.
The latest round raised had the participation of Basecamp Fund, Capital, Commerce Venture, Commerce Ventures, Soma Capital and Y Combinator, Oui Capital also made a re-investment as it had once made an investment into the company through the pre-seed round raised.
Duplo’s Co-founder, Yele Oyekola, gave insight into his startup so far, stating, “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 catalyse growth and maximise 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,”
Participating investor, Oui Capital, represented by Peter Oriaifo, principal at the Venture capital, mentioned that Duplo’s team had developed an “incredible” array of products that will enhance the business’s practice towards making and receiving payments from each other.
Peter said, “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.”