Okra secures $3.5M Seed Round Led by Susa Ventures

Okra, Africa’s Open Finance API is excited to announce its $3.5m Seed raise. The round was led by US-based Susa Ventures, with participation from existing investors TLcom Capital, and newly joined Accenture Ventures.

Okra, Africa’s Open Finance API is excited to announce its $3.5m Seed raise. The round was led by US-based Susa Ventures, with participation from existing investors TLcom Capital, and newly joined Accenture Ventures.

Okra is an Open Finance platform that enables developers and businesses build personalized digital services and fintech products for customers. Okra’s API is a one-stop-shop for fintech developers in Africa.

Leading the round, San Francisco-based Susa Ventures is known as one of the premium seed-stage funds in Silicon Valley with notable early investments, including Robinhood, multi-billion dollar company Flexport, Andela and Fast. Susa is also known for co-investing with top tier firms like Peter Theil’s Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, GV (Google Ventures), General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, & Accel Partners.

Beyond Susa and Accenture Ventures, Okra brought on three super angels to this round. Rob Solomon; Chairman at GoFundMe — he is also a former Partner at Accel, Arpan Shah; Founding engineer and ex- Head of Data Platforms/Data products at Robinhood, and Hongxia Zhong; Founding engineer and ex- Senior engineering manager at Robinhood.

Susa’s General Partners include Chad Byers, who is the son of Brook Byers, a founding member of Kleiner Perkins; Leo Polovets, ex-LinkedIn and Google engineer; and Seth Berman, who was previously the VP of marketing at luxury good company Richemont (CFR:VX) — owners of Cartier, Montblanc, Piaget, etc. Seth Berman, General Partner at Susa adds, “We’re thrilled to partner with Okra as they enable developers across the African continent to transform digital financial services. We’re blown away by the quality of Okra’s team, the pace of development, and the excitement from the customers building on their API.”

Omobola Johnson, Senior Partner at TLcom Capital and Former Minister of ICT in Nigeriasays, “We have consistently been impressed with Fara’s technical depth and expertise, which when combined with the entrepreneurial acumen she and David bring to the company leaves us confident that they are building Africa’s most stable and robust API infrastructure. TLcom is delighted to continue partnering with Okra.”

Accenture, a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security also participates in this round, with Tom Lounibos, Managing Director, Accenture Venturesadding,“Fara and David have a compelling vision and value proposition, and we believe Okra’s powerful technology can address critical challenges in the African financial market. We look forward to working together to help Okra scale its solutions for maximum impact.”

Consumer behaviour in Africa is changing and consumers are demanding full digital experiences of all services — including financial services. Across the business landscape, the number one priority across every board room is digital transformation and Okra is the go-to platform for developers and businesses to build end-to-end personalized digital experiences for consumers in Africa.

Are you passionate about continuous learning, are you a tinkerer by nature looking for problems to be solved, products to build, decisions to make, and people willing to help you out along the way?

If so, visit okra.ng/careers to learn more about our open roles.

Need help? Contact us at okra.ng/contact-sales. For developers in the house, check out our docs!