The lending infrastructure company has given early investors an exit while existing backers increased their stakes, as its bank partnerships and customer base expand.
Kuunda, the fintech company that builds digital lending infrastructure for banks and other financial services providers, has completed a $5 million secondary share sale, a deal that gives early backers a way to cash out without the business raising fresh primary capital.
Chief executive Andrew Milne told Condia that this was the company’s second secondary transaction since Kuunda was founded in 2018. He said the sale was designed to provide liquidity for some of the startup’s earliest investors, including angel backers, while also simplifying the ownership structure. The transaction cut the number of shareholders on the cap table from 12 after the last funding round to four.
The company’s earlier secondary sale came as it prepared to close its pre-Series A round. That financing, announced in 2025, ultimately raised $7.5 million after Kuunda initially sought $3 million. The round was oversubscribed and included $2.2 million in secondary sales, allowing some investors to realise returns alongside the company’s capital raise.
Milne said the latest sale underlined the progress Kuunda has made since launch. “This is an important milestone for Kuunda and our investors. Delivering a successful secondary at this stage reflects the strength of the business we’ve built,” he said.
Existing investors Accion Ventures, Portugal Gateway Fund and Seedstars Africa Ventures increased their stakes in the company through the latest transaction, which was led by E4E Africa. Bas Hochstenbach, managing partner at E4E Africa, said the firm was keen to deepen its position because Kuunda is using technology, distribution and bank partnerships to deliver financial services to markets where traditional institutions have limited reach.
Kuunda’s business model centres on lending infrastructure rather than direct consumer lending. The company works with banks, mobile money operators and other financial institutions that already have customer relationships, helping them launch and manage digital credit products through existing platforms. It uses transaction and behavioural data to assess credit needs and borrower risk, then supports the process from profiling and loan origination to reporting and reconciliation.
That approach is aimed at a persistent funding gap for mobile money agents and small businesses in emerging markets. Agents need enough electronic float to keep transactions moving, while micro-merchants often need working capital to buy inventory and keep operating. Kuunda has built two main products around those use cases: Hapa Cash, which provides short-term liquidity and e-float financing, and Kazi Cash, which offers longer-term support such as stock financing, term loans and merchant cash advances.
Since the 2025 pre-Series A round, Kuunda says it has expanded bank partnerships from six to 16 and grown its customer base from 2.6 million to nearly four million. The company says it has now disbursed more than 870 million loans worth more than $4.4 billion since inception. Milne said the speed of that expansion is creating a new bottleneck. “We’ve hit such a rate of scale that our biggest constraint to future growth is capital access for our partners,” he said.
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