Nigerian Fintech Startup Duplo Raises $4.3M

Lagos-based fintech, Duplo, has raised $4.3 million in seed funding.

The seed funding round, led by Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Tribe Capital, Commerce Ventures, Basecamp Fund, and Y Combinator, will help Duplo launch new products and expand its business into new sectors in Nigeria. 

The fintech platform, founded by Yele Oyekola and Tunde Akinnuwa in September 2021, has become one of Nigeria’s top fintech platforms, helping African organizations seamlessly collect payments from their clients and partners.  

In February, the startup managed to raise $1.3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by pan-African VC firm Oui Capital. Earlier this year, the company also secured a place in Y Combinator’s winter accelerator program. The additional funding has come at a good time for the organization, which is looking to expand its services further.

“One distributor can cater to over 1,000 retailers and onboard them on Duplo,” said co-founder and CEO Yele Oyekola. 

“Those retailers can become Duplo customers as well. And it becomes easier for us to digitize how payment moves between retailers and distributors,”  

Despite the bulk of Duplo’s work centering around managing B2B payments within Nigeria, it has recently expanded its services to help facilitate payment to businesses outside the country over recent months. 

According to the company, it currently facilitates payments from merchants in other regions like the U.S., U.K, and across Europe. However, Oyekola and Akinnuwa believe there’s room for more growth. 

“We strongly believe that there is a great opportunity to catalyze growth and maximize business opportunities across the continent – we are excited to have raised funding from this exciting group of investors to deliver this much-needed transformation.” Oyekola added. 

The additional funding will help the company launch new products and expand into new business verticals across the continent.