ChapChap, a Ugandan Fintech startup that creates reliable financial profiles for MSMEs, has secured a funding round from Nordic Impact Funds to accelerate their commercial growth and social impact creation.
The investment transaction was conducted via the Investure – Impact Exchange, which matches impact projects in developing countries with a global pool of investors.
ChapChap Africa was founded in 2016 by Emmanuel Emodek and James Alituhikya, together with their former primary school teacher Monica Asiimwe Kiconco who they reunited with after close to 25 years.
The trio wanted to empower small and medium sized enterprises, giving them access to digital financial tools and resources to help them scale their businesses.
According to Emmanuel Emodek, Co-Founder and Managing Director of ChapChap, “We are very excited to start out 2022 with this capital injection to accelerate our expansion within and beyond the Ugandan market. We are already servicing more than 20.000 MSMEs in Uganda. This injection is to facilitate digital capacity and financial inclusion for a million customers”.
Lisbeth Stausholm the Founder and Managing Partner of Nordic Impact Funds said, “We are extremely proud of this investment. It has a strong focus on small and often women-owned businesses, who can professionalize and expand their businesses thanks to ChapChap”.
On the use of Investure – Impact Exchange, Emmanuel comments: “We are grateful for the investor match via Investure – Impact Exchange. We have here found a mission aligned investor who will help us scale. In the longer run, we also see the Investure platform as a pathway to a secondary market listing”.
Joakim Blom, Co-founder and CEO of Investure, added, “The African continent has many opportunities for investors and businesses. But, it can be risky and costly navigating through the uncertainties. That is why we at Investure are here to provide structured information, comprehensive professional data-room, and an end-to-end investment process. So that investors like Nordic Impact Funds can receive all the information they need via the platform.”
The investment from Nordic Impact Funds will help ChapChap Africa scale its solution also beyond Uganda and realize its mission to improve the livelihoods of low-income individuals and businesses by enabling them to leverage digital and mobile technology to unlock access to; gainful employment, trade opportunities, affordable credit facilities and low-cost financial services.
Nordic Impact Funds invests in early to mid-stage companies with proven impact and profitability that are in the process of scaling their business model.
They apply a gender lens to all investments and like to be active partners to the companies they invest in.
Through its Nordic Impact Investments fund, they have so far made 3 investments in East Africa focused on building resilience in underserved communities.
The round was facilitated by Investure – Impact Exchange, a blockchain based technology platform that facilitates an end-to-end investment process, including a structured data-room, investor matchmaking, digital signatures for legal documents and later asset servicing and secondary market trading.
ChapChap is a Ugandan Fintech startup that creates reliable financial profiles for MSMEs by introducing new formal business in their day to day trade. ChapChap’s Android app helps small shops to start operating mobile money agency business, track all transactions that occur in the store, and build a credit profile on the MSMEs.
Investure is an impact exchange working to bridge the excessive funding gap in developing markets. Its blockchain based solution eliminates investment barriers through digitalization of private market transactions, asset servicing and creating liquidity through a secondary market.
Nordic Impact Funds is an impact investment management company domiciled in Copenhagen with an investment office in Nairobi. It is an active investor in East Africa and seeks to invest in innovative companies with strong solutions to the challenges of underserved communities – either by the creation of jobs and opportunities for income generation or by the provision of new, affordable and highly needed products and services.
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