Nigerian digital banking start-up Kuda Bank has raised $50m in a Series B funding round to expand into other African countries.
Co-led by existing investors Valar Ventures and Target Global, the latest funding round values the company $500m.
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The round was also joined by SBI and few other investors, TechCrunch reported.
The latest round comes close on the heels of Kuda’s $25m Series A funding round in March 2021.
Kuda Bank co-founder and CEO Babs Ogundeyi told TechCrunch: “We’ve been doing a lot of resource deployment … in Nigeria. But now we are doubling down on expansion and the idea is to build a strong team for the expansion plans for Kuda.
“We still see Nigeria as an important market and don’t want to be distracted so don’t want to disrupt those operations too much. It’s a strong market and competitive. It’s one that we feel we need to have a stronghold on.”
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By GlobalDataThe report added that the start-up was not actively looking to raise funds when the latest round was initiated and closed.
Target Global partner Ricardo Schäfer said: “We felt that Babs and Musty are ambitious on another level. For them, it was always about building a pan-African bank, not just a Nigerian leader. The prospect of banking over 1 billion people from day one really stood out for me at the beginning.”
Valar Ventures general partner Andrew McCormack said: “Kuda is our first investment in Africa and our initial confidence in the team has been upheld by its rapid growth in the past four months.
“With a youthful population eager to adopt digital financial services in the region, we believe that Kuda’s transformative effect on banking will scale across Africa and we’re proud to continue supporting them.”
Founded in 2018, Kuda was rebranded and launched in its current name in 2019.
