Nigerian food tech platform, Orda, has raised a $3.4 million seed round to digitise food businesses across the continent. The seed round, which was co-led by Quona Capital and FinTech Collective, also saw participation from institutional investors, including Far Out Ventures and Outside VC, angels Doneci Kone and Julian Shapiro, and follow-on investment from the Norrsken Foundation, Lofty Inc Capital, and Enza Capital. Following its previous raise of $1.1 million, this current round brings Orda’s total funds raised to $4.5 million this year.
The company provides a cloud-based operating system to small and medium-sized restaurants across Nigeria and Kenya. Founded in 2020 by Guy Futi, Fikayo Akinwale, Mark Edomwande, Kunle Ogungbamila, and Namir El-Khouri, Orda helps small-sized African restaurants optimize their businesses with its wide range of products and services.
The startup offers kitchen display systems, order and inventory management, integration with the top food aggregators, accounting software, microsites, and mobile apps, to African restaurants. There are also plans to include a lending feature.
The majority of restaurants in Africa are small and medium-sized, and according to Orda, it now processes more than 500% more weekly orders for these types of restaurants and has expanded its customer base to over 600 restaurants in Nigeria and Kenya.
Although primarily a cloud-based solution, Orda’s application works offline, enabling restaurants to continue logging data even when internet access is not available. The data syncs with the cloud application when the restaurant is back online. The company also claims that its cloud operating software has been built to have maximum functionality even when there is spotty internet service.
With the recently completed fundraise, Orda has vertical expansion in sight as it looks to improve its payments, credit, and lending solutions, helping customers gain even more value from their businesses.
”We have a huge backlog of restaurants to onboard, and we’re confident of reaching 1,000 active restaurants within the next three months. Our vendors love our solution, and we do a good job of listening to feedback and incorporating that into the new features we roll out. We do our very best to always centre the restaurant’s experience at the heart of our operations,” said Afua Ahwoi, Head of Operations at Orda.
Speaking on the raise, Samatha Wulfson, an investor at FinTech Collective, said, “Digitising the long tail of restaurants across the continent presents an opportunity to tap into Africa’s largest consumer spend category. Not only does Orda’s omnichannel solution produce immediate efficiency gains for restaurants, but a roadmap encompassing embedded payments and credit also creates a path to tap into the flow of funds throughout an enormous food and beverage industry.”
