M-Kopa, a financial technology firm based in Kenya, raised more than $250 million of debt and equity to fund its expansion in sub-Saharan Africa, Chief Executive Officer Jesse Moore said.
(Bloomberg) — M-Kopa, a financial technology firm based in Kenya, raised more than $250 million of debt and equity to fund its expansion in sub-Saharan Africa, Chief Executive Officer Jesse Moore said.
The debt-funding was led by Standard Bank Group, the continent’s largest lender, with participation from the International Finance Corp., British International Investment, Mirova SunFunder and Nithio, the company said in a statement on Monday. Some $55 million came in as equity from investors including Summit Corp., which put in $36.5 million. Blue Haven Initiative and Lightrock, Broadscale Group also participated.
M-Kopa plans to grow its business in existing markets and start piloting services in South Africa as part of its continental-expansion plan, according to Moore, who is also the co-founder of the firm.
“The debt deal is very significant for us because it effectively allows us to double the scale of what we’ve been doing,” he said in an interview. “We have sold over a million solar home systems and now over 2 million smart phones and we are beginning piloting of electric motor cycles on a similar basis.”
M-Kopa, founded in 2011 in Kenya, started off retailing solar-powered electrical equipment on a pay-as-you-go arrangement and diversified into health insurance, as well as providing credit for purchases of other items including smart phones and electric motorcycles. It has a customer base of more than 3 million people in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Ghana, and has provided over $1 billion of cumulative credit.
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“There’s still a huge underserved market and that’s where we hope to be able to make an impact,” Moore said in reference to South Africa, which has a relatively higher banking penetration. “We’ll be piloting through basically the rest of the year.”
The company will initially focus on smart phones, while paying attention to the power challenges in the country, he said.
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