Duplo, a Lagos-based fintech backed by Y Combinator has raised $1.3 million pre-seed funding to solve problems around inefficiencies in terms of moving goods from manufacturers and suppliers to retailers; usually involving collecting cash through a network of agents.
The startup, founded by Yele Oyekola and Tunde Akinnuwa in September last year wants to achieve this by digitizing payment flows for B2B companies to curb fraud in manual reconciliation processes on the distributors’ end, starting with those in the industry.
The pre-seed round was led by early-stage pan-African VC firm Oui Capital with local and international investors such as MyAsia VC, Y Combinator, Flutterwave CEO, Olugbenga “GB” Agboola and Mono CEO, Abdul Hassan participating.
It is expected that Duplo will spend most of this investment on improving its product, tech and sales as well as move into other sectors asides from FMCG retail to businesses in travel, farming, B2B marketplaces, alcohol and beverages.
Duplo got into Y Combinator and is taking part in the accelerator’s current winter batch.
What they are saying about the funding
Yele Oyekola, Chief Executive Officer who has had seen how people and businesses rely heavily on cash as an economic policy officer for the UN in Africa said the startup is looking to digitize payment around Africa.
“We are trying to make cash obsolete in Africa where lots of businesses in the distribution space heavily transact in cash for obvious reasons. We are focused on distributors, merchants and aggregators to stop the use of cash in this value chain because everyone knows how expensive cash is and how difficult it is to move with issues around theft and fraud.”
He added, “Our value proposition is we help businesses automate, embed and launch payment products. Basically, inflows or outflows, automatic reconciliations for businesses and embedding payments into marketplaces. And then we also have businesses that want to provide BNPL services to smaller businesses.”
Peter Oriaifo, principal at Oui Capital said, “We’re excited to support Yele, Tunde, Emeka and the rest of the team at Duplo as they look to build a scalable B2B payments platform for the African market. We believe that with the proliferation of commerce in Africa, there’s an emerging need for solutions such as Duplo’s that help abstract away complexities around payments.”
