Cameroonian crypto and savings platform Ejara raises $8 million, led by Anthemis and Dragonfly • TechCrunch

Ejara, a Cameroonian fintech that offers an investment app that allows users to buy crypto and save through decentralized wallets, has raised $8 million in Series A investment.

London-based venture capital firm Anthemis led the growth round alongside crypto-focused fund Dragonfly Capital. Anthemis is a follow-on investor in Ejara, having led the fintech’s $2 million seed round announced last October.

Participating VC firms in this new funding include other follow-on investors Mercy Corps Ventures, Coinshares Ventures and Lateral Capital – and new investors such as Circle Ventures, Moonstake, Emurgo, Hashkey Group and BPI France. Jason Yanowitz, co-founder of Blockworks, is one of the angels in the round.

Ejara wants to “democratize access to investment and savings products across the region using blockchain technology.” While its recently launched savings product that tokenizes government bonds is one of the ways it uses blockchain, so is its crypto product, which was central to the two-year-old startup raising $10 million in less than 18 months.

By giving users in Francophone Africa an opportunity to buy, sell, exchange and store their crypto investments, CEO Nelly Chatue-Diop and her co-founder Baptiste Andrieux saw an opportunity to increase crypto activity in the region. However, unlike most crypto platforms in Africa that provide users with custodial wallets, Ejara offered customers the option of non-custodial wallets so that they could own and store their keys. This decision paid off, especially during this period when the collapse of FTX and other crypto organizations continues to emphasize the need for customers to prioritize privacy and ownership when handling crypto and tokenized assets.

“When everyone was going the other way and building centralized exchanges, we always thought that if you want to own crypto, you have to own your keys. And that’s pretty much what’s saved us in turbulent times,” Chatue-Diop told TechCrunch over a conversation.

Ejara’s crypto product has caught on quickly with users in a region where access to financial products is limited to the most informed and wealthy. In addition to connecting their mobile money accounts and accessing crypto, users can also make cross-border transactions via stablecoins. As a result, users on the platform have grown exponentially over the past 14 months. By October last year, it had 8,000 users from Cameroon, its first market, and others including Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea and Senegal. It now has more than 70,000 users across nine francophone African countries.

Chatue-Diop – who noted that Ejara has seen 10x revenue growth and achieved 15% month-on-month transaction volume growth since last October despite crypto’s meltdown – expects users on the platform to reach 100,000 by the end of the year. The savings product, which Ejara described in a statement as the first of its kind in the crypto world, was launched to get it there. “In an ecosystem where many people around the world are trying to find use cases for blockchain technology, Ejara has shown that startups in emerging markets are likely to pioneer many such innovations in web3. added the company.

With this product, the Cameroonian fintech claims that users do not need to create a bank account to access savings products, but can instead start their journey with Ejara by downloading the app and depositing a minimum of 1,000 CFA francs (~$1.5). Users can earn up to 10% interest on their two-year deposits on the platform, Chatue-Diop said, adding that Ejara is going up against traditional financial institutions with this product.

“The competition for government bonds is with the traditional asset managers and the banks. And given the way they are structured, they are mainly aimed at high net worth individuals and institutions such as other banks or insurance companies,” she commented. “No one is targeting the woman who sells in the markets or the man who rides a motorcycle for a living. And because we structure the product the way we do, we have many people who come to our platform because they can save up to 1,000 CFA francs daily.”

Both lead investors in this round recognize Ejara’s ambition to be a financial super app of sorts for users in French-speaking Africa and even those in the diaspora who send and invest money back home. Mia Deng, a partner at Dragonfly, said Ejara is well positioned to imitate the growth of China’s Alipay and WeChat Pay, two prominent web2 super apps, and help the Francophone region achieve a web3 economic leap in the coming years.

“Aware of the challenges across the zone, Ejara does not intend to limit itself to being a crypto app, but rather to become a one-stop shop for products tailored to the needs of Africans: a store where a variety of financial products will be available at your fingertips, with no need for cryptography,” Ruth Foxe Blader, partner at Anthemis, said of Ejara’s potential.

Ejara’s journey to one million users is somewhat dependent on how quickly the target group picks up the nuances related to crypto, savings and investments. That’s one reason the fintech is championing a couple of non-profit initiatives to educate the public, especially women, girls and orphans, about crypto, savings, investments (it has yet to launch its fractional investment product) and financial education while preparing the market for its growth .

“The initiative we launched for women and orphans and girls is to improve their financial literacy and computer skills. When I think of Ejara, I think of an ecosystem and as an equalizer to bring the community together, whether they are in Africa or the diaspora, either they belong to the elite or they are in the poorer strata of society, said the CEO who also mentioned that Ejara recently received a license to expand its offerings to the French-speaking diaspora in Europe.

Last week, Djamo, an Ivorian fintech, announced what appears to be the largest equity round in the country. At $10 million, Ejara is one of Cameroon’s most funded companies (if not the most funded). There are two similar events across different francophone markets in quick succession. Although it is too early to tell, the market seems to be rapidly embracing innovation and its ecosystem – which mostly embodies a strict regulatory landscape – is becoming more attractive to foreign venture capital despite the current global slowdown.