African corporate cards and expense management platform Budget has raised $2 million in seed funding. The startup, which deals with how African businesses, including SMEs, startups and enterprises, manage and handle finances, received this capital from lead investor Y Combinator and other backers including Entrée Capital, Voltron Capital, Unpopular VC, Kima Ventures, Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, Alan Rutledge, Heirloom VC’s Tristan Walker, and Mono CEO Abdul Hassan.
Bujeti targets businesses in sectors such as healthcare, logistics, agriculture and construction and makes it easier to issue company cards to their employees and contractors, streamlining spending processes. The platform includes features that help these businesses effectively control and manage expenses by applying spending limits, restrictions and approval flows for different stakeholders in the business chain, including executives, staff, contractors and vendors.
The startup, in a statement, said the latest investment will accelerate its growth, expand its market presence and strengthen its offerings. The roadmap for upcoming features includes the introduction of credit limits for small and medium-sized businesses and the development of new business-tailored products.
The two-year-old fintech, led by the founder and CEO Cossi Achille Arouko and COO Sammy Chiba, launched in April 2022. Before devoting their full-time efforts to startup YC W23, both executives started development of an MVP while in their previous roles. Chiba was a project manager with French commercial launch services provider Ariane Space, while Arouko worked at African payments startup Paystack. It was during his tenure as CTO of Paystack’s commerce, subscriptions and invoicing team that Arouko conceived the idea for Bujeti.
At a time when Paystack was considering launching an API for issuing cards, Arouko revealed in an interview with TechCrunch that he and his team, while managing subscriptions and collections, identified a critical need to help businesses manage expenses their. This sparked the original idea of Bujeti. Originally envisioned as a business-to-consumer platform, Bujeti aimed to enable users to create cards using the Paystack API. In addition, it sought to manage expenses, facilitate online remittance payments and automate remittance processes for people outside the continent. However, it made a turn into service businesses months later.
“While I was still serving consumers, I did some research and found other players who were also using Paystack, one of them was Divvy [now BILL] In the US it was the same idea, but it was towards business,” the CEO said on the call. “That made me realize there was also a market for business. We used Divvy on Paystack back then and each employee had an account to manage expenses, cards and reimbursement requests. Seeing Divvy and other platforms tackle spend management in the US, Europe and Nigeria, then I thought we could work on it for that market.” Unicorns Ramp and Brex are the most notable examples worldwide.
Corporate cards are usually issued by a business to selected employees, usually senior executives, enabling them to make payments on behalf of the company. While companies in the US and EU can quickly obtain multiple cards from banks with high card penetration, the process is not as straightforward in Africa, where card penetration is still low, particularly for traditional businesses in agriculture, logistics, healthcare and construction (although not heavily technology-oriented, these industries contribute significantly to the GDP of many African countries).
As a result, businesses often share a single card to deal with this, leading to security, audit and fraud issues. Bujeti’s platform wants to solve that allowing African companies to issue cards to their employees at will while maintaining control over their spending.
“What this brings to employees is the freedom to spend. So a company can create a budget or sub-account for a group of employees to spend on. Then create approval policies and rules around cashiers and let employees make the payments – which makes it easier to operate, speeds things up and prevents them from always waiting for someone to come in to approve your expenses,” noted the CEO , who also described the platform’s functionality in automating compensation.
In the past eight weeks, Bujeti has installed nearly 1,000 businesses across the continent, ranging from SMEs to startups such as Mono, Spleet and Eden Life, Arouko noted, adding that the startup aims to reach ₦200 million (~ $200,000) in processed transactions soon.
Bujeti’s competitors in the African market include startups such as Duplo, Flex Finance, Allawee and another YC-backed startup, Boya, according to Arouko. A key point he emphasizes is that while some platforms focus on unique features like expense management or corporate cards, Bujeti offers both features. In cases where platforms offer both features, Bujeti stands out by providing superior automation capabilities and multi-entity management. This allows users to efficiently oversee teams across locations, departments or geographies.
In addition, Bujeti is actively working on introducing a multi-currency feature. This improvement will allow businesses to pay their staff in different countries, positioning Bujeti to expand its services internationally when the opportunity arises.
Hassan, an investor in the funding round and co-founder of Mono and OyaPay (a startup he founded with Arouko, which is now defunct), he said of the investment: “Investing in Achille and Bujeti was an obvious choice. they target a significantly fragmented market with capable founders who excel in technical and business aspects. We believe in their potential to transform the way businesses handle their finances and are excited to be a part of their journey.”
