Black-Owned Bookkeeping Platform Raises $5.5M To Support Nigerian Merchants

Black-owned digital bookkeeping platform, Pastel, has raised $5.5 million in a seed funding round. The round led by pan-African venture capital firm TLcom Capital also included other VC firms such as Global Founders Capital, Golden Palm Investments, DFS Labs, Ulu Ventures and Plug and Play, and Soma Cup. 

Pastel, co-founded in 2020 by Abuzar Royesh, Olamide Oladeji, and Izunna Okonkwo, is a platform designed to help build digital tools to provide a solution to issues small businesses across Africa face. The platform’s primary goal is to unlock the potential of small businesses in developing countries using their apps. 

The company’s most popular product, Sabi, is an app that allows businesses to manage better and monitor their transactions and customers. For example, the Sabi Cash app will enable entrepreneurs to stay on top of all business inventory and send receipts and invoices without maneuvering through multiple apps. 

“The new capital will assist us in increasing our efforts in this area as we look to expand our product offerings and develop more productivity and finance management features and tools around group savings, loans, and payments for small businesses,” said co-founder Izunna Okonkwo. 

“Our thought process was as soon as we got traction, the next step was to capture some value. So we added features to the Sabi app and what we’re building now is a little more.” 

According to the platform, Pastel has been able to help over 100,000 small businesses by managing their bookkeeping, generating their invoices, and providing them with receipts. 

The additional funding will help expand Pastel’s products and services, developing productivity and finance management features to benefit small businesses.