Kippa, the financial management startup backed by Target Global, is pivoting from fintech and is piloting a new edtech service that enables anyone to create new online courses or deliver exciting ones in bite-sized formats using AI, an ex-employee with knowledge of the business told TechCabal.
Kippa has created a new website for its new product, with which users can produce online courses and deliver those courses using messaging tools like WhatsApp and Telegram.
Kippa declined to comment on any part of this article.
Kippa’s pivot from financial management and bookkeeping is unsurprising given the company’s struggles in the past year. In 2023, the company laid off 40 employees after a difficult decision to shut down Kippa Pay, its agency banking business. At least two ex-employees said the layoffs were surprising.
“One month before the layoff, in a general meeting, one of my colleagues asked the CEO—Kennedy Ekezie—if there would be job cuts, and he said no,” said an ex-employee.
KippaPay was later transferred to the Nigerian fintech company Bloc, and some of Kippa’s employees moved to Bloc as part of that process.
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“I know that the entire engineering team was laid off,” another ex-employee said, claiming that less than ten people are working on the new edtech product.
“Monty Dimpka, who was laid off, rejoined as engineering lead for the new product. There is also a web engineer, a finance manager, a customer-facing staff, and a product manager in India working on the product.”
With this transition, Kippa leaves behind discontinued and unreleased projects. Two employees told TechCabal that before the company shut down its agency banking product, there had been plans to unify it with the bookkeeping app. There were also plans to monetize its Invoice service, but none worked out. “I am rooting for them, though. Kennedy is a great guy.”
