ImaliPay, a financial services platform offering financial products to freelancers and gig workers has secured a $3 million seed in debt and equity round to provide financial services for gig workers.
The startup said the new fund which follows an $800,000 pre-seed round in 2020 will enable it enter new markets in Ghana and Egypt as the investment will be used for expanding its team.
The funding round saw participation from VCs such as Ten 13, Uncovered Fund, MyAsia VC, Jedar Capital, Logos Ventures, Plug N Play Ventures, Untapped Global, Latam Ventures, Cliff Angels, Chandaria Capital and Changecom as well as Angel investors like Keisuke Honda of KSK Angels and others from Serbia, Kenya and Norway and Google Black founder fund.
What ImaliPay is saying
Speaking on how the startup created a partner ecosystem structure to allow access to new users, also supporting its ecosystem and marketplace, Tatenda Furusa, a co-Founder and CEO of ImaliPay told Techcrunch that they (Tatenda alongside co-Founder, Oluwasanmi Akinmusire) researched the gig economy and found that they were neglected by some financial services.
“We saw that we were perfectly placed on building a fintech solving the problems of Africa’s gig economy workers, freelancers and self-employed digital workers.
“We built out other services around spare parts, smartphones, power banks, savings and investments, and insurance bundled with those products. Like accident covers and income protection loss insurance, we intertwine these products so gig workers can qualify for each product based upon their transactional behaviour,” Furusa said.
What you should know
- ImaliPay’s also partners with platforms such as Bolt, Glovo, SWVL, Amitruck, Safeboda, Gokada and Max.ng to help vendors that deal with fuel, spare parts, mobile phones and other items gig workers need to operate.
- Similarly, the platform partnered with financial institutions to provide additional financial services such as insurance and savings in Kenya and South Africa.