Nigerian fintech startup Piggybank.ng continues to impress with its growth, earning the company $1.1 million in seed funding.
The savings startup attracted the $1.1 million from a group of investors led by LeadPath Nigeria, with international and pan-African investors including Washington, D.C.-based Village Capital and Lagos-based Ventures Platform, according to Techmoran.
Piggybank.ng is an app which enables users to reach their savings targets through a combination of discipline and flexibility. It has attracted around 53,000 active users who save through the platform on a monthly basis.
The automated savings platform will use the funding for license acquisition and product development, as well as increased marketing activities to boost its growth, which has increased 20-to-35 percent month-on-month over the last year.
Odunayo Eweniyi, co-founder and chief operating officer of Piggybank.ng, explained the importance of such a platform in the West African nation.
“In a country such as Nigeria, almost everything has to be paid in advance. The majority of Nigerians struggle to save their income, manage cash flow and build credit, which is a huge problem as around 80 percent of Nigerians need to save a minimum of 40% of their monthly income, in order to survive,” Eweniyi said, according to ITNewsAfrica.
“This is the sheer scale of the challenge we are embracing; to actively promote a savings culture in Nigeria and act as the savings infrastructure to millions of people who want a safe, transparent and innovative platform to assist them in managing their finances, on their journeys to financial freedom,” she said.
This is not the first time that U.S.-based venture capital fund Village Capital has invested in Piggybank.ng, having backed the fintech startup in 2017.
Village Capital runs an annual venture development program for early-stage African fintech startups. In 2017 two financial inclusion-focused startups emerged as the top two out of seven, winning themselves $50,000 investments and gaining knowledge and experience from the program, according to Ventureburn.
The two winning fintech startups were Kenya’s Olivine Technology and Nigeria’s Piggybank.ng.
Piggybank.ng was also one of the 12 startups selected for Google’s first Launchpad Accelerator Africa class, which was designed to mimic the global program based in Silicon Valley, according to Techpoint.
The African class was based in Lagos, with six of the selected startups from Nigeria, two from Kenya, and one each from Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana and South Africa.
