Klasha raises $2.4m seed fund to build cross-border commerce infrastructure in Africa
Klasha raises $2.4m seed fund to build cross-border commerce infrastructure in Africa
Earlier this month, Klasha, an African Fintech company focused on developing borderless payments for e-commerce, announced the completion of a $2.4 million seed round to fund the development of technology infrastructure for cross-border commerce on the continent.
In addition to Greycroft and other venture capital firms, the round included investors such as Seedcamp, Berrywood Capital, AVG Basecamp Fund, Practical VC, Plug and Play, First Round VC, Expert Dojo, 2.12 Angels, and MiLA Capital, as well as angel investors such as Santosh Ankola, former Head of Product at TechCrunch, and Michael Pennington, founder of Gumtree.
With the launch of Klasha in 2018, Jessica Anuna aimed to make it easier for African consumers to pay foreign merchants in their home currencies.
In addition to claiming 10,000 customers and processing over 20,000 transactions across Africa, the Klasha team claims to have experienced a 366 percent month-on-month growth rate.
Klasha will use the funds raised from this investment to further develop its technology, which will allow international B2B and B2C businesses such as ASOS, Zara, Amazon, and Zoom to accept payments online in African currencies from customers all over the world through its platform.
At the moment, Klasha is only available in three African countries: Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya. The company plans to invest in growing revenue, expanding its customer base, and entering new markets in three additional African countries by the fourth quarter of this year. Klasha is currently available in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya.
Africa has more than 400 million internet users, and the value of e-commerce in the continent is expected to reach $29 billion by 2022. In order to address the payment and delivery challenges that African consumers face when transacting on the continent, Klasha has developed a platform.
Klasha offers four business products that are designed to make cross-border payments for African commerce more efficient. If you have an e-commerce platform, Klasha Checkout can integrate with it, allowing international merchants to accept payments in local currencies from African consumers using familiar methods such as USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data), mobile money, or bank cards. Additionally, customers can take advantage of low-cost and expedited delivery options for their purchases on the website.
Customers can send and receive money from family and friends in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya who also use the Klasha mobile application for free by utilizing the Klasha mobile application. Aside from that, users can create a virtual card, which they can then fund with their transactions.
Small business owners can easily make large payments to international suppliers while reducing transaction costs by using the KlashaWire service, which can be accessed directly from the Klasha dashboard. payments are typically received in the supplier's dominant currency within two business days of the payment being processed
In order to collect payments, Klasha payment links enable businesses without physical locations to create a simple custom checkout page directly from their KlashaDash dashboard and share it with customers via email, WhatsApp, or other social media platforms.
In an interview with the New York Times, Alison Lange Engel, a partner at Greycroft, expressed her excitement about the investment in Klasha.
As Alison Lange Engel stated in a press release, "The technology behind Klasha enables seamless cross-border transactions at a time when Africa is rapidly growing and requires both payment and logistics solutions for online commerce." The opportunity to work with Klasha and their mission of facilitating borderless commerce in Africa is an exciting one for us."
