Pezesha, a Kenyan finance fintech has managed to raise Ksh. 1.3 Billion ($11 million) in a pre-Series A equity-debt round led by Women’s World Banking Capital Partners II with participation from Verdant Frontiers Fintech Fund, cFund and Cardano blockchain builder Input Output Global (IOG). The round also included a $5 million debt from Talanton and Verdant Capital Specialist Funds.
Founded in 2017 by Hilda Moraa, Pezesha has built a scalable digital lending infrastructure that allows both traditional and non-traditional finance institutions to offer working capital to MSMEs. She started Pezesha after successfully exiting Weza Tele in 2015.
The fintech intends to utilize the funds to expand into Nigeria, Rwanda and Francophone Africa. The new growth strategy follows its plan to power its embedded finance offering beyond its current markets including Uganda and Ghana, to bridge the financing gap affecting millions of micro, small medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) across these markets.
The fintech works with partner companies such as Twiga and MarketForce, which integrate its credit scoring APIs in their platforms to enable their customers get real time loan offers.
Pezesha indicated that it is currently working with over 20 partner companies that have enabled it to extend loans to over 100,000 businesses to date. It expects this number to grow before the end of the year as an additional 10 companies integrate with its infrastructure. The fintech is able to extend loans of up to $10,000 at single digit interest rates, and a repayment period of one year.
Pezesha plans to create a $100 million financing opportunity each year for businesses by tapping local and international banking institutions, high net-worth individuals and decentralized finance.
Hilda Moraa had this to say, “The opportunity and impact in solving working capital problems for SMEs is huge. [We are] solving the root cause, which is information asymmetry issues, to ensure quality and responsible borrowing. Pezesha solves this through our robust API driven credit scoring technology.”