Black-Owned Indicina Raises $3M To Help Businesses Offer Their Customers Credit At Scale

Access to credit is a big problem in Africa. Indicina is building the infrastructure to unlock it.

Indicina, the digital lending platform providing analytics-driven credit decisions for lenders based in Lagos, Nigeria, has announced its seed round of $3 million.

Berlin-headquartered and pan-European venture capital firm Target Global led the round with participation from Kuda, Kippa, and Edukoya.

The firm’s partner Ricardo Schäefer will join Indicina’s board. Greycroft also participated in this round, and so did RV Ventures.

What does Indicina do? It builds products using Open Banking so credit providers can approve more people, helping them make instant credit decisions.

So this means that lenders can use the start-up for credit scoring and bank sentiment analysis, getting access to ML-driven financial analytics and improved insights into consumers they currently don’t have and derisk unsecured loans. 

“Only 17% of African banking customers have consumer loans – less than half of those with a transaction product. This massive consumer credit opportunity requires technology and credit risk innovation that most lenders currently don’t have,” Indicina CEO Yvonne Johnson previously told TechEconomy.

“The market opportunity is driven by both regulation and improved financial technology. Central banks in many African countries, for example, Egypt and Nigeria have recently introduced regulation that mandates a minimum ratio of consumer loans (individual retail and SME) to the total loan portfolio.

“IFC’s estimate of this opportunity is $300B. To capture the upside in consumer lending, banks need a competitive digital offering backed by strong data and analytics capabilities for more efficient customer acquisition and risk assessment,” Johnson added.