Pezesha raises seed extension to fuel expansion across Africa

Pezesha has announced the close of a seven-figure growth funding round led by GreenHouse Capital (GHC).

The pan-African fintech company committed to building scalable lending infrastructure for small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) and institutions disclosed this on Tuesday. According to Pezesha, the on-lending liquidity support from  GHC’s sister company Venture Garden Group (VGG) will support their growth and also enable them to expand access for SMEs to affordable working capital.

Established in late 2016, Pezesha provides solutions to the $82 billion working capital and trade finance access problems in Africa by enabling non-traditional finance institutions to offer working capital to SMEs using their lending infrastructure.

Over the years, the company has built a robust Application Programming Interface (APIs) to originate quality SMEs and original credit scoring models that allow capital to flow efficiently and productively.

Responding to the seed extension, Hilda Moraa, CEO and Founder of Pezesha expressed her delight in the company's ability to access this growth fund stating that it will unlock Pezesha’s vision of building the operating system to power embedded finance in Africa

Hilda said, ‘we have aligned in vision with GreenHouse Capital as well as our commitment to solving the working capital challenges that are preventing African SMEs from achieving their full growth potential. GHC’s investment will catapult our growth by enabling us to scale our existing partnerships with the likes of Twiga Foods, Jumia, Marketforce, and Popote Pay, among others.’

In separate remarks, Ruby Nimkar, Principal at GreenHouse Capital stated that ‘Pezesha is breaking down barriers to SME financing by taking an ecosystem approach to the problem of access to capital. Their embedded finance model is truly groundbreaking’.

Nimkar expressed GHCs’ confidence in the ‘talented team’ at Pezesha to take their model into new markets and continuously close the SME financing gap across Africa.

Pezesha has scaled its lending infrastructure in Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria and is planning to launch in Uganda in September of 2021. Recall that, Pezesha previously raised capital from Consonance and Seedstars which also enable them to expand their credit infrastructure on the continent.