Lagos, Nigeria (29 September 2020): Itanna, the venture capital arm of Honeywell Group, announced its participation in Indicina Technologies’ most recent round of seed funding, investing $150,000 in the fintech start-up. The new financing will accelerate the start-up’s continued expansion within Nigeria, as well as support further development of their proprietary technology platform and their pursuit of expansion opportunities in other African markets.
Indicina’s flagship product, Originate, is an innovative full-stack lending-as-a-service platform utilising machine learning to drive a digitally led consumer finance strategy.
With rapid product development as a key focus, Indicina will continue to develop Originate to advance digitisation of the credit value chain across all customer segments and allowing lenders, bank and non-bank, to underwrite risk intelligently, helping to improve default rates within the industry. The Originate platform can manage the entire process from customer acquisition, operations and underwriting, portfolio management, to loss management. The rising demand for digital tools across the continent, presents an opportunity for Indicina to explore the deployment of Originate in other African markets.
“The credit lending industry needs innovative, industry-leading tools to tackle the unique challenges presented to lenders in developing countries,” said Tomi Otudeko, Director of Itanna. “What Indicina and the team have developed over the last two years is hugely impressive, and we’re excited to be working together to create a global market leader. Indicina is a great example of the type of founder-led, capital-efficient business that we like to invest in.”
About Indicina
Co-founded in 2018 by Yvonne Johnson and Yemi Ajao, Indicina is an Africa-focused digital lending platform that provides analytics-driven credit decision for lenders. It utilises a proprietary machine learning decision engine to quickly identify and reject potentially bad loans during the application and underwriting process. Therefore, enabling lenders to make real-time lending decisions with improved risk outcomes.
About Itanna
A core component of the Honeywell Group’s overall innovation strategy, Itanna is an investment fund that provides expertise, market connections, institutional knowledge, and capital required to enable innovative teams to build trailblazing enterprises. Itanna operates from the Enterprise Factory located in Lagos, Nigeria, working with start-ups at every stage of maturity to provide the tools, resources, and expertise they need to succeed. The initiative is broad-based and includes a community and an accelerator programme, as well as a growth fund.
About Honeywell Group
Honeywell Group is a leading Nigerian investment holding company with investments across major sectors of the Nigerian economy: foods, real estate, infrastructure, energy and services. The Group is also a significant investor and provider of capital to other sectors of Nigeria’s economy including financial services. Honeywell Group has built a solid track record, successfully establishing thriving, world-class companies which are market leaders in their respective sectors.
