Babs Ogundeyi’s Kuda Bank raises $55-million Series B, now valued at $500 million

Nigeria’s first mobile-only bank startup, Kuda Bank, has announced the successful closing of a $55-million Series-B funding round.

TechCrunch reported that the funding was made at a $500-million valuation.

Kuda Bank is a London-based, Nigeria-operating fintech company that provides banking services to users. It offers a mobile app that enables users to make payments and manage savings and spendings.

The company was co-founded in 2017 by Babs Ogundeyi. He currently serves as its CEO.

The funding will enable it to scale up its Nigeria operations, launch into more regional markets and build new banking services for “every African on the planet,” Ogundeyi said.

Kuda was not actively raising money when its Series-B round was initiated and closed. Therefore, the funding was executed by its existing investors, co-led by Valar Ventures and Target Global, including SBI Investment and several previous angels.

In March, Valar Ventures and Target Global co-led its $25-million Series-A funding round.

Last November, Target Global led investors to raise $10 million in a seed round for the fintech startup, the most significant seed funding that any African startup had received up until then. This follows a $1.6-million pre-seed round raised in 2019.

So far, the Ogundeyi-led fintech company has raised $91.6 million in funding.

With a population of more than 200 million people, Nigeria is its primary market. The startup now has 1.4 million registered users, a significant growth from the 650,000 registered users it recorded in March when it raised its Series-A round.

“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,” Ogundeyi said. “It’s one that we feel we need to have a stronghold on. So this funding is to invest in expansion and have more experience in the company with relation to expansion.”