Lagos-Based Identity Verification Startup, Youverify Closes $1.5m Seed Round Investment from Orange Digital Ventures

David Afolayan
Gbenga Odegbami, CEO of Youverify
Gbenga Odegbami, CEO of Youverify

Youverify, a Lagos-based startup that helps automate due diligence and compliance by using data-driven decisions for the financial services, and telecommunication industries, has announced a raise of $1.5m seed round of equity financing.

The round was led by Orange Digital Ventures Africa (ODV), Orange group’s dedicated 50m€ investment initiative in the MEA region. It was joined by Loftyinc Afropreneurs Fund, a West African early-stage technology fund that has previously backed top startups such as Andela, Flutterwave and Reliance HMO.

Co-founded by its CEO Gbenga Odegbami, Youverify provides API for address and identity verification in Africa. The company has the ambition to help organisations use data and its insight to make automated and efficient business decisions. It also aims to help speed up previously manual back-office processes.

Lagos-Based Identity and Address Verification Company, Youverify Raises $1.5m Investmen1
Gbenga Odegbami Pitching Youverify to an audience at #EV2018

Speaking on the raise, CEO Gbenga Odegbami says:

This constitutes a unique opportunity for us to take further our ambition to simplify and secure our client’s internal processes, whether in the recruitment of staff,  customer onboarding etc. Our ambition is to be the leading African player in verifying people and companies’ identities by making data protection and security the core of our proposal.“.

The investors are hopeful the raise will help Youverify accelerate growth and execution of its technology roadmap to empower Africans with their identity most reliably and securely.

According to Grégoire de Padirac, Investment manager at ODV:

“The matters of security and access to financial or telecommunications services should never be at odds. Telecom operators like Orange are at the forefront of these transformation challenges. We are proud to support Youverify, which intends to resolve this triple objective of fostering financial inclusion, strengthening security and preserving user rights over their data”.

On his part, Idris Bello, Managing Partner, Loftyinc said “we are excited to back Youverify in its quest. The investment fits into our thesis of backing strong local founding teams with a bias towards execution, leveraging technology in solving key problems across Africa’s large markets.  We have worked closely with Gbenga and his team over the past year and are excited to joined ODV and others on this journey.”

Since its commercial launch in 2018 in Lagos, Youverify has processed registrations and verification for some of the biggest banks, Fintech platforms and on-demand platforms in Nigeria. 

Youverify’s solution allows organisations to bring together siloed data sources which can include identity data, educational data, addressing data, credit history, facial image and others to drive a customisable decision-making process to seamlessly onboard customers in a secure and regulatory compliant manner.

Lagos-Based Identity and Address Verification Company, Youverify Raises $1.5m Investment-3
From left, OpemipoKehinde, Marketing Manager Bolt Nigeria, Terver Bendega, Regional Marketing Manager Africa, Uche Okafor, Regional Manager, West Africa, Gbenga Odegbami, CEO YouVerify, Femi Akin-Laguda, Bolt’s City Manager for Lagos, Nigeria, at the unveiling of a new identity verification portal for drivers, in Lagos

In Africa where the due diligence process is traditionally arduous and manual, Youverify offers a simple, nimble, easy-to-adopt, and cost-effective solution to transform the customer onboarding decisions and streamline this process while reducing fraud, manual processes and cost.


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