The Africa-based blockchain payment startup, Bitmama has raised a $1.65 million pre-seed expansion fund, an addition to the $350,000 it garnered in the last pre-seed round that was held last October. A total of $2 million has been gathered at the closing of the just concluded per-seed round.
This just-concluded pre-seed round was led by Unicorn Growth Capital and Launch Africa Ventures. Following up on their previous investment in the October pre-seed, Adaverse and Flori Ventures also participated in this just concluded round.
This new round also saw the investments of new investors. These investors are Tekedia Capital, GreenHouse Capital, ODBA, Five35 Ventures, and Chrysalis Capital. Enrich Africa, Thrive Africa, Angelist Ventures. Angel investors such as Honey Ogundeyi and the founders of CELO; Rene Reinsberg and Marek Olszewski were also participants in the just concluded pre-seed event.
According to their issued statement, these newly generated funds will be used to strengthen its team across different markets, expand the company’s operational presence, consolidate its product offerings and plot market penetration across Africa while at the same time scaling new use cases for cryptocurrency within Africa.
Speaking on this fundraising, the CEO and founder of Bitmama, Ruth Iselema has shown how pleased she is with the impacts achieved by the team over the years. While stating the commitment of the company to building Africa’s most user-friendly blockchain company, she also appreciated the partners and investors for their contribution to the market dynamics.
“Bitmama has made a number of strides in the past year. We’ve rolled out two products, both of which are fast closing in on 100,000 users across the African market and recording impressive daily active users across our range of product offerings despite the market dynamics.”
“We are building Africa’s most user-friendly, innovative blockchain company, and we are glad to have the backing of seasoned investors and partners who have walked similar turfs. We are privileged to learn from their blended experiences across corporate and blockchain business verticals. We are confident of the results we’ve achieved so far and we are set to build the next big solution that the market deserves”, she added.
Also commenting on the pre-seed fund, Janade Du Plessis, Managing partner at Launch Africa stated that the partnership of the company is to truly allow Africans to explore the world of cryptocurrencies. In his word stated:
“As a prominent Pan-African VC fund, we see our partnership with Bitmama as a way to truly allow all Africans with the ability to trade and manage cryptocurrencies, and digital assets conveniently and universally, creating a significant impact on allowing more people to trade and transact across Africa. This is something that we specifically value in our Fund and what Bitmama in particular delivers.”
Still commenting on the just concluded pre-seed sales, the founding partner of Five35 ventures, Hema Vallabh stated that her company looks forward to helping Ruth and her team scale the performance of Bitmama. Quoting her she said:
“Being a leading female-focused VC fund, we at Five35 Ventures look forward to helping Ruth and her dynamic team scale Bitmama, especially seeing the growth of Changera, the remittance platform that allows all Africans to transact internationally at much cheaper rates than established remittance companies in the market.”
What you should know about Bitmama
Bitmama is a US-African-based and functioning blockchain company that enables users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies seamlessly through debit cards. Bitmama also facilitates regular online payments, utility payments and different transactions such as Staking to hedge against currency devaluation.
It also issues VISA-powered virtual cards that give its users up to $10,000 as a month’s spending limit. These cards are credited with stablecoins and are compatible to make all online transactions.
With markets currently in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya, Ruth believes that she and the team can leverage the blockchain to build solutions to facilitate stress free peer-to-peer payments across Africa.
