Lidya is a digital lending platform that offers loans to small and medium businesses, with individual loans ranging from $500 to $50,000 and credit decisions delivered within 24 hours. The platform evaluates applicants with about 100 data points to build credit scores and assess risk. Founded in 2016 by Tunde Kehinde and Ercin Eksin after their experience at ACE and Jumia Nigeria, the company began in Nigeria and expanded to Poland and the Czech Republic in late 2019, fully launching operations there in early 2020. To date Lidya reports it has disbursed over 25,000 loans, has more than a 90% customer repeat rate, and has disbursed over $3 million in its two European markets, with an overall default rate below 1%. Lidya currently funds its loan book with equity rather than debt but intends to transition to debt financing after proving its algorithms, and is pursuing debt deals. The company plans to grow teams in Lagos, Prague and Warsaw and use new capital to scale lending operations and support lines of credit. Lidya is a financial services platform focused on improving access to credit for small and medium enterprises. Founded in 2016 by Tunde Kehinde and Ercin Eksin (the ACE duo who previously worked at Jumia), the company targets MSMEs across sectors including farming, hospitality, logistics, retail, real estate, technology, and health. Since launch it claims to have made over 1,500 business loans. Lidya was recently accepted into the MasterCard Start Path Programme. The company previously raised a $1.25M seed round in March 2017 and has now completed a $6.9M Series A. The new funding is earmarked to expand the loan book, scale operations in Nigeria, enter new African markets, and hire data scientists and engineers. Lidya is a fintech platform operating in Nigeria that leverages credit algorithms to allow small companies to build a credit score and access loans. The platform evaluates customers and can deliver qualified loans in as little as 48 hours based on risk and capacity. Co‑founded by Tunde Kehinde and Ercin Eksin, Lidya has registered 20,000 businesses on its service. It has financed firms across agriculture, consumer goods, services, and the creative industries. The company is targeting ₦1.5 billion in loan originations to SMEs in Nigeria in its first year of operations. Lidya plans to use recent funding to accelerate product development and grow its team.

Total raised

$16M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Jul 2021