ANKA (formerly Afrikrea), an Ivorian SaaS eCommerce platform, has raised $5 million in a pre-Series A extension round that combines debt and equity.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) led the round, with Proparco and the French investment bank Bpifrance participating.
By 2030, ANKA hopes to onboard 100,000 African sellers with the help of this funding while using the debt component to cover short-term cash needs for things like shipping and payment float.
It will also use the funding to support its efforts in product development and service expansion to promote and further the growth of African entrepreneurship on a global scale.
ANKA bills itself as an all-in-one SaaS for multinational African companies. However, it ran an online store (Afrikrea) for apparel, accessories, arts, and crafts with African roots and inspiration until 2021.
At the time, TechCrunch reported it had assisted thousands of buyers from 170 countries and over 7,000 sellers from 47 African nations.
Since its last capital infusion in January 2023, ANKA's margins and the community of African SMEs in these 47 countries have almost doubled. It claims it has received over 700,000 monthly visits and handled $35 million in transactions in 2016.
According to Kadry Diallo, Co-Founder and COO, the figures have increased to over a million visits and $50 million across 175 nations, increasing revenue by 18 times, from €200,000 to €3.6 million.
Moulaye Taboure (CEO) said the transition to a SaaS eCommerce platform was necessary to focus merchants' attention from various channels, such as websites and social media, onto a single platform.
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Because of this, ANKA acts as a one-stop shop for three different user types: exporters looking to ship internationally, online retailers using multiple channels who want to combine all of their orders on one platform and drop shippers looking to produce, ship, and create jobs in Africa while getting paid internationally.
The new round of funding brings the company's total investment since its founding in 2016 to $13.5 million.
The company plans to expand its presence in top nations where it has already experienced unmatched growth, including Nigeria and Kenya for the number of sellers and the US for the number of customers and subscribers.
It also intends to actively hire sales, tech, and product talent with the investment to fuel its expansion.
