This time last year, Nigerian-founded and San Francisco-based startup Flutterwave just finished closing on a $35 million Series B funding round. Now this week they close on an additional $170 million, bringing the company’s value to over $1 billion, TechCrunch reports.
This Series C round was led by New York-based private investment firm Avenir Growth Capital and U.S. hedge fund and investment firm Tiger Global. Additionally, new and existing investors who participated in the round also include DST Global, Early Capital Berrywood, Green Visor Capital, Greycroft Capital, Insight Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Tiger Management, Worldpay FIS 9yards Capital.
According to TechCrunch, Flutterwave has raised an upwards of $225 million total in the last three years and is one of the few African startups to have secured more than $200 million in funding overall.
We previously reported that the startup had processed more than $5.4 billion in transactions as of 2019, more than doubling its processed transactions in 2018. Today, the company has increased those numbers to over 140 million transactions worth more than $9 billion.
Flutterwave — which launched back in 2016 with offices in Lagos and San Francisco — was created with a goal to help Africans establish global businesses by devising a tech-based payment system that links Africa to the global economy.
Beyond Africa, the company has also helped major international corporations including Booking.com, Facebook, Flywire and Uber.
While Flutterwave has seen great growth since it first launched, last year proved to be a pivotal one for business as TechCrunch shares that its second investment arrived right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
According to Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola, his company grew more than 100% in revenue over the last year due to COVID beneficiary sectors that were positively impacted by the pandemic. This also contributed to its compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 226% from 2018.
Flutterwave’s latest Series C investment is helping the company reach its goal of becoming a global payments company, and it plans to use the new funds to speed up customer acquisition in its present markets. Moreover, the funding will also improve existing product offerings, TechCrunch reports.
With a tremendous $170 million raise and a billion-dollar valuation in less than 10 years, Flutterwave represents what landmark achievements look like in the African startup scene.
For more information on Flutterwave, visit its website.
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