A $3.4 million seed investment has been made in Orda, a Nigerian food tech platform that offers a cloud-based restaurant operating system to help small, independent eateries with these problems.

Pre-seed capital of $1.1 million was raised by the two-year-old firm in January, which brings the total funding secured this year to $4.5 million.

The round was co-led by New York-based FinTech Collective and emerging market investor Quona Capital. Present investors like LoftyInc Capital, Enza Capital, and Norrsken Foundation are among the additional investors. New venture capital firms like Outside VC and Far Out Ventures are also among the additional investors.

The majority of its customers are small and medium-sized eateries. These restaurants often use offline techniques like pen and paper because they have limited access to technology for things like manual reconciliation and inventory management.

Various businesses can manage these aspects of their operations online thanks to Orda’s operating system, which also gives them access to other tools like accounting software, kitchen display systems, and food aggregator integrations like those with YC-backed Bolt Food and Jumia.

Guy Futi, the chief executive officer, said that Orda has an innovative approach to software and setup assistance for restaurant operators.

With the use of its software, people who write things down by hand can digitize their workflow and monitor their inventory and recipe yields.

In its two countries, Nigeria and Kenya, tiny restaurants have adopted Orda en masse, according to Futi, who also asserts that the firm may have achieved product-market fit.

His confidence is supported by the approximately 600 merchants it has attracted and the speedy onboarding process (less than a year) that Food Tech provided.

Considering that Orda intends to service more than 1,000 eateries by the end of Q1 2022, the chief executive claimed that there are “hundreds more” in the pipeline ready to be onboarded. The number of transactions on Orda has also grown.

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It currently fulfils 50,000 more orders for its merchants each week than it did in January, and its gross merchandise value (GMV) is rising 30% month over month. Futi continued by saying that Orda is expanding quickly in Kenya and Nigeria and has a retention rate of over 95%.

According to Orda’s pricing structure, restaurants can access various components of the software, such as order management and an omnichannel, as well as integrations with food aggregators, delivery platforms, and set up staff, for N1,000 ($1.54), N5,000 ($7.69), and N20,000 ($30.76). As such, revenue has grown by 30% month over month, according to Futi.

To enable lending and payments for its consumers, Orda plans to expand the platform’s functionality, especially in the area of financial goods.

According to Futi, the platform already handles payments for 10% of its merchants, and a significant expansion might start by Q2 of the next year.

One of the food tech’s goals with this fresh investment is to build and scale up its payment capability. Others include maintaining its pan-African expansion push and growing its restaurant network (into South Africa and, much later, Ivory Coast).

For its upcoming phase of expansion, it has strengthened its leadership team by adding professionals such as Afua Ahwoi, head of operations and strategy (ex-Goldman Sachs), and Modesola Osasomi, head of growth (ex-Barclays Bank).

(Source)