Portfolio: Irofit Series A Wins Afridigest Deal of The Week Designation
Irofit, the Finnish parent of the ZirooPay mobile payment platform, won the Afridigest Deal of The Week designation for its $11.4 million Series A round, ahead of Union Square Ventures’ first investment on the African continent.
“One of the longstanding issues with retail card payments in Nigeria and other markets is unreliability,” wrote Afridigest. “ZirooPay solves for this.”
The funding round was led by Lagos -based Zrosk Investment Management, which also backs Africa’s largest independent carmaker Nord. Fedha Capital and Exotix Advisory also participated as well as existing shareholders, including Inventure and Revalence Ventures.
“We’re exited to see African lead investors ahead of the most storied VC funds of the world,” said Jonas Dromberg, founder and principal at Revalence Ventures. “It is of paramount importance for the African startup ecosystem that local investors get to share the prospects of this rising continent.”
Other funding rounds nominated included the Union Square Ventures -led $9 million Series A round into Shift EV, an Egyptian electric vehicle platform, and a $10 million Zedcrest Capital -led round into Leatherback, a Nigerian/British cross-border payments and remittance platform. New York -based USV has led early investments into Twitter, Stripe and Coinbase, among others.
“While the mPOS solution is our first product built on the platform, it can also process payments for wallet applications, cryptocurrencies, in-app payment processing, and even micro-lending services for small businesses in developing countries,” Irofit CEO and Co-founder Omoniyi Olawale told Afridigest. “We decided to start with the strongest business case, prove the platform and market demand, then scale from there.”