JUMO Secures USD 52 Mn Led By Goldman Sachs For Expansion In Africa And Asia
South African Fintech startup JUMO today announced an equity funding round of USD 52 Mn led by Goldman Sachs. The funding round also had participation from other investors including Proparco, the private sector financing arm of the French Development Agency (AFD), Finnfund, Vostok Emerging Finance, Gemcorp Capital, and LeapFrog Investments.
With the latest round; JUMO’s fundraising now totals up to a massive USD 90 Mn. The technology platform that serves as a marketplace for inclusive financial services will be using the funds for further expansion into new markets.
CEO of JUMO, Andrew Watkins-Ball commented, “The support of Goldman Sachs and our other investors is a significant endorsement of JUMO. We are working hard to connect hundreds of millions of people with access to the best possible choices from leading banks. We are proving that the evolution of computation and storage means that there is no longer any reason why the best financial products should not be available to people in the early stages of building wealth.”
Launched in 2014, the growing company claims to have served more than 9 Mn customers with nearly 70% of these being micro and small business owners. In the official statement released by the startup on its platform, it mentions of disbursing over USD 700 Mn in loans on its platform.
JUMO, earlier this year had raised USD 3 Mn in equity from Proparco, and this round comes as a massive infusion of funds for the company. On backing this fintech startup, Jules Frebault, Executive Director at Goldman Sachs, commented, “There is immense opportunity across Africa and beyond for JUMO to build on their successful track record developing digital marketplace infrastructure to offer mobile subscribers access to relevant financial products. We are excited to partner with this highly capable team as they continue to leverage technology to advance financial inclusion.”
JUMO leverages the mobile networks to provide loans and savings-products to its customers. It has developed a credit scoring algorithm which helps customers to unlock the value of their digital footprints by giving an accurate estimation of their creditworthiness. The startup bundles products from various banks and sells it to businesses on look out for credit. The entire process of lending is facilitated through mobile networks, where the startup has tied up with a number of service providers.
Given high feature phone usage in key markets as well as customer sensitivity to data costs, JUMO offers transactional capability via basic USSD, Web or App to allow broad-based access and usage of the platform and products.
