Churpy , a fintech startup based in Kenya, is looking to expand across Africa by setting up hubs in Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa for a planned continent-wide expansion, driven by the $1 million in seed funding it has just raised.
The account receivables automation startup is out to change how businesses manage the debt owed to them by their customers through its SaaS product, which automates the processes of reconciling incoming payments and invoices, a labor-intensive process that is still predominantly manual for most local companies.
The startup is connected with some of the largest banks in the region–including Citibank, Sidian, Stanbic and NCBA – through its API, which gives businesses using its SaaS product access to real-time statements and transaction data that can be used to reconcile pending invoices from enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) — used to tract daily company activities like accounting and supply chain operations.
“We are hiring more people as we plan to enter Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, which are the hubs into their [respective] regions. We are also putting finances into product development as we plan to scale our offering,” Churpy co-founder, Kennedy Mukuna told TechCrunch.
Churpy’s partner banks have a presence across Africa, which Mukuna said, will make it easier for the startup to scale its operations.
Mukuna co-founded Churpy last year, together with John Kiptum, whom he had met a year earlier at an accelerator program by Antler East Africa. Both Mukuna and Kiptum have extensive experience in data analytics, banking and risk management having worked for organizations such as the World Bank and Citibank. Their experience in the banking sector, they said, made them familiar with the pain-points for customers in the sector. The founding team has since been joined by James Kanyangi, who has vast experience in payment operations, AI and robotics.
“It was really not hard for us to unlock a lot of ideas, products, innovation and tech around the financial industry space. We’ve been there, we’ve seen how it works or why it doesn’t work, why it’s slow, why it is ineffective, and why customers are not happy. And so, what we are building is inspired by real experiences,” said Kiptum.
The startup is conducting a pilot programme with some of the major manufacturing and service enterprises in Kenya, including Unga Limited and Chandaria Industries.
“On the dashboard, these companies are able to see who owes them money, how efficient they are at collecting […]
