FinTech Asilimia Closes $2M Pre-Seed Funding to Grow Beyond Kenya

FinTech startup Asilimia raised $2 million in a pre-seed funding round, with $1 million coming from a wide range of European Angel investors and $1 million in a debt round that included Bpifrance and GreenTec Capital Partners, according to reports.

The Kenyan startup said the pre-seed funding will support team growth and expansion while debt funding will enable Asilimia to extend credit to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

Asilimia is developing an app-based platform for digital payments, revenue tracking, sales, expenses, financial insights and accounting processes for small businesses that can all be accomplished on a mobile phone.

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The platform is intended to make it easier for MSMEs to take advantage of wide-ranging financial services, including insurance, savings and loans.

“Our focus over the last few years has been to build a solution that works, and this new funding will enable us to take it into new markets and impact the lives and livelihoods of more business owners,” Tekwane Mwendwa, CEO and co-founder of Asilimia, told Kenyan Wall Street.

Smaller, informal businesses are the backbone of Kenya’s economy, contributing 33.8% to the country’s GDP and providing 83.4% of total employment, except for small-scale agriculture, according to data from The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.

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While these businesses have an important impact on Kenya’s economy, they are underserved by legacy financial institutions. The gap is being filled by FinTechs like Asilimia, which has helped traders make mobile money transactions using its Leja app, which doesn’t have any transfer charges.

Asilimia was co-founded in 2017 by Mwendwa and Morgane Kablan, who serves as COO, with the goal of creating Africa’s first financial infrastructure for the informal economy. The startup was incubated in the Station F program in Paris and went through the Norrsken Impact Accelerator program.