Spleet, a Nigerian prop-tech startup, has received a $625,000 pre-seed funding round as it looks to further its drive to provide tenants with affordable loans to help them pay their rent.
The funding is an oversubscribed pre-seed round, which was led by MetaProp VC including other participants like Future Africa, FEDHA Capital, VFD Group, Moonshot VC, HoaQ, Squarefoot CEO Jonathan Wassersturm, Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, and others.
According to the startup, the funding will be used to build Spleet’s newest rent financing product ‘Rent Now Pay Later’ and other products to enable seamless residential rental processes as it is designed to give tenants access to affordable loans to pay rent.
What they are saying
Tola Adesanmi, co-founder and CEO, Spleet said, “After launching a marketplace in 2019, we realised that the issues in our rental market were beyond what our marketplace could solve. Affordability is one of the biggest pain points for tenants. Most tenants earn income monthly and can therefore not afford the 1-2 years burden of paying their rent in advance.
“We decided to change this by building a financing solution, “Rent Now, Pay Later”, to help tenants get homes with as little as 1-2 months rent worth of savings. We are currently in beta testing our rent now, pay later product with a select number of tenants and we are happy with the results so far. We will extend this to a wider market of tenants and potential tenants in the coming months.”
Zachary Evans, co-founder and general partner at MetaProp, expressed excitement about the deal, noting that the startup has distinguished itself from others in Nigeria. He said, “It remains extraordinarily difficult to rent apartments efficiently and we believe Spleet will create a massive business by removing this friction. We are very excited about our investment in Spleet and our broader entrance into the West African proptech market.”
What you should know
- Spleet was founded in 2018 by Tola Adesanm to find provide rentals with flexible payment options in Lagos as opposed to the usual one or two year upfront payment options.
- The startup enables landlords to verify and vet tenants whilst also automating rent collections.
