Pastel, a Nigerian startup under the radar for more than a year, announces a $5.5 million fundraising round led by pan-African venture capital firm TLcom Capital. Other venture capital firms such as Global Founders Capital (GFC), Golden Palm Investments, DFS Labs, Ulu Ventures, Plug and Play and Soma Cap also participated in the round.
The startup raised a $620,000 pre-seed last year from some of its existing investors. The company’s flagship product, Sabi (not to be confused with a B2B e-commerce marketplace of the same name), is a digital accounting application that enables small businesses to monitor and manage their transactions and customers, obtain information on their cash flow, issue receipts, and effectively manage the customers who are indebted to them.
The accounting and customer relationship management that Pastel launched last year has had more than 100,000 merchant registrations by December 2021, Okonkwo said. The free app currently has over 45,000 active merchant users. Pastel recently added more features for merchants to capture more value in this channel.