Nigerian startup, Pivo, has closed a $2 million seed round from several investors including Precursor Ventures, Vested World, Y Combinator, FoundersX, and existing investor, Mercy Corp Ventures.
Pivo is a financial services provider targeted at SMEs in Africa’s supply chain sector having been founded from an observation by CEO, Amadi-Emina, that many businesses in the sector struggled with financing to fulfill their orders.
“It’s not necessarily a case of they don’t have any business or orders; nobody is giving them cargo to load or orders to fulfill. They had it but didn’t have the financial capital to fulfill it,” said Amadi in March 2022.
Pivo, which has a focus on freight carriers (businesses transporting cargo), currently serves about 500 SMEs as direct customers and makes revenue by charging interest on capital and fees on payments processed.
Since launching in 2021, Pivo has been expanding its product offering starting with Pivo Capital, its first credit product, which gives SMEs access to loans worth as much as US$50,000.
With this funding, it plans to continue its expansion drive on a mission of making it easy for supply chain SMEs to make, receive, and track payments with ease. Specifically, Pivo will be building new products to improve transaction management and payment reconciliation for supply chains while they also plan to upgrade existing products.
This will include enhanced payment capabilities for typical recurring payments specific to its customers. Moreover, Pivo wants to expand its presence by opening more locations and teams in Nigeria and East Africa.
“We will find the best people, who understand our vision and have the experience and expertise, to help us achieve our growth targets,” Pivo said.
Besides Pivo Capital, the startup has also launched Pivo Business which offers business accounts with features like invoicing and bulk payments to help SMEs manage their cash flow better.
The startup wants to create an all-in-one financial services platform for supply chain SMEs offering services that include inventory financing, corporate account services, and asset financing.
“As Pivo launches additional products to graduate from a pure fintech lender to a full-fledged financial services platform, we are excited to see the company deliver a full suite of financial services specifically designed for the needs of the unattended supply-chain sector SMEs they serve,” said Daniel Block, Investment Principal at Mercy Corps Ventures.
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