Fakoyejo Olalekan
Former First Bank of Nigeria employee, Yvonne Johnson, raises $3 million from foreign investors, including Target Global, which is known to fund Nigerian startups, for her credit agency company, Indicina.
Johnson’s Indicina operates in the financial services, helping banks, non-bank lenders and fintech, such as VFD, Zilla, Polaris Bank, CreditDirect, and LipaLater to determine credit worthiness, which assist in preventing potential bad loans.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelWith over 120 customers on its books, Johnson secured the $3 million to help Indicina expand its consumer credit recommendations business beyond its current market, which includes Nigeria and Kenya.
She had previously raised $7.2 million from Angel Investors, Greycroft, Catalyst Fund, Kepple Africa Ventures, Future Africa, Zedcrest Capital Limited, Acuity Ventures, and Itanna, according to figures from Crunchbase.
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Prior to Johnson establishing Indicina in 2018, she worked at First Bank of Nigeria as the firms Head for Corporate Strategy, as well as Head, Strategy and Corporate Development, between 2009 to 2018. She is also an Early Stage Investor.
The fund is expected to expand the company’s operational focus from lenders to loan seekers, enabling applicants see their credit worthiness when applying for loan, as well as enable Indicina employee more data scientists and machine learning engineers.
“We have been working with the lenders; now we want to involve consumers. So, they see what the lender would see if they are going to apply for a loan.” Johnson said about the new operational path.
“We’ve never had any balance sheet. It’s never been about offering credit for us. We want to focus on the infrastructure layer and provide good infrastructure for people to feel more comfortable. We want lenders to be better informed about the decisions around credit so they can go to market faster with their digital products. So, we’ve never had a business model that included our balance sheet, which we’ve always worked with the lenders.” she said.
