TLcom Capital has participated in a $1m pre-seed fundraising in Okra, a Nigerian fintech platform.

The investment marks TLcom’s first investment in the fintech sector and as part of the deal, Andreata Muforo, Partner at TLcom, will join Okra’s board.

Ido Sum, also a Partner at the VC firm, will join as a board observer.

Launched in January 2020, Okra’s “super-connector” creates a secure portal and process to exchange real-time financial information between customers, applications and banks.

The investment will be used to scale Okra’s team and operations.

Currently, developers and organisations in Africa do not have access to real-time banking data, creating large hurdles during the onboarding and verification of customers.

Okra is the first in Africa to bridge this gap, delivering a new layer of transparency between organisations and users in the lending, personal & corporate finance and real estate sectors.

Supported by the strong engineering background of their founding team, Fara Ashiru Jituboh (formerly of Fidelity Investments and Canva) and David Peterside (from UCML Capital and Fashion Map), the company’s technical expertise has already seen them connect with all of Nigeria’s commercial banks as well as the likes of Branch, AIICO Insurance Plc, Travelstart, Bamboo, Renmoney and Swipe (YC) amongst others.

With the capacity to onboard new clients in under 24 hours, the startup has seen a 175% rise in demand since March 2020 as more companies digitise their services due to COVID-19 and is seeking to expand across Africa.

Fara Ashiru Jituboh, Okra’s CEO & CTO, said: “Our thesis is simple — financial innovation cannot exist without the proper infrastructure, which is data. Essentially, how far the African fintech sector can grow is intrinsically tied to the success of an infrastructure like Okra and with our core market in Nigeria, we’re opening the door to another level of innovation in Africa’s largest market.”

“There are approximately 125m banks accounts in Nigeria alone — but over the course of the next two years, we will see that figure rise exponentially, which presents huge opportunities for growth. Our role within this is to deliver ease, speed and transparency to key players within the fintech space so they can get back to driving our continent forward,” he added.