The Nigerian mobility startup Moove, which provides revenue-based vehicle financing to help individuals across Africa own their own vehicles, has raised a US$23 million Series A funding round to help it expand more quickly.
Moove was founded by British-born Nigerians Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi, who have successfully built three other businesses in Africa over the last eight years through venture studio Grace Lake Partners, Moove is democratising vehicle ownership in Africa by providing revenue-based vehicle financing to mobility entrepreneurs.
Moove embeds its alternative credit-scoring technology onto ride-hailing and e-logistics platforms, which allows access to proprietary performance and revenue analytics of mobility entrepreneurs to underwrite loans. Its model is to provide loans to its customers by selling them new vehicles and financing up to 95 per cent of the purchase within five days of sign up.
Moove customers can choose to pay back their loans over 24, 36, or 48 months, using a percentage of their weekly revenue. All Moove customers sign up to the Moove app to manage all transactions and access other financial products on the platform. The company is Uber’s exclusive vehicle financing and vehicle supply partner in sub-Saharan Africa, with Moove-financed cars having completed more than 850,000 Uber trips covering over 13 million kilometres across the continent to date.
The startup has now raised a US$23 million Series A funding round, led by Speedinvest and Left Lane Capital with participation from DCM, Clocktower Technology Ventures, the latest ventures, LocalGlobe, Tekton, FJ Labs, Palm Drive Capital, Roka Works, KAAF Investments, Class 5 Global, and Victoria van Lennep, the co-founder of Lendable. Kepple Africa Ventures, and one of Moove’s existing lenders, Emso Asset Management, also joined the round, which brings Moove’s total funding to US$68.2 million, including US$28.2 million in equity and US$40 million in debt.
Moove will use the funding round to build a full-service mobility fintech that democratises vehicle ownership across Africa. The market opportunity is vast – Africa is home to 1.3 billion people, with 43 per cent in urban areas and growing, and in 2019 had fewer than 900,000 total new vehicle sales compared to 17 million in the U.S.
“In a continent full of opportunity, mobility is key to moving economies forward and this funding contributes to our ability to provide revenue-based financing, as Moove empowers Africans to safely become mobility entrepreneurs,” said Ladi Delano, co-founder of Moove. “We help people buy new cars who otherwise couldn’t afford them. And then, using the vehicle as a mobility entrepreneur, they’re able to earn money, which allows them to pay off the vehicle over time.”
Moove was initially bootstrapped by its co-founders with seed stage funding from Future Africa, an Africa-focused fund led by Iyin Aboyeji, who was a founder at Andela and Flutterwave. The new Series A funding will allow Moove to grow and expand into new markets as well as develop and launch new products and services. The equity raise follows a year of momentum and success for Moove with the launch of three cities and 60 per cent month-on-month growth so far.
“With Ladi and Jide at the helm of a world-class team, and their unique approach to vehicle financing, Moove has quickly established itself as one of the most exciting tech companies in Africa,” said Stefan Klestil, general partner at Speedinvest. “The company’s expansion to three cities in under 12 months demonstrates the huge demand for vehicle financing in Africa, where just five per cent of new cars are purchased with financing, compared to 92 per cent in Europe.”