Nigerian fintech, Infibranches gets $2m funding from Shell to diversify its energy products

Nigerian fintech startup, Infibranches Technologies Limited has secured $2 million funding from All On, an investment company backed by oil and gas giant, Shell. The fund will be deployed into providing energy solutions to communities across Nigeria.

Founded in 2019 by Olusola Owoyemi, Infibranches is a startup that aims to provide digital financial services for service providers in the energy sector. It made the final cut for Nigeria’s First Resilience Digital Startup Accelerator Program by Forbes and Global Startup Ecosystem.

Through its flagship products – OmniBranches and Green Energy Plug – Infibranches helps companies with large distribution networks, particularly Solar Home System (SHS) distributors and mini-grid developers, to manage their operations.

According to Infibranches CEO, Olusola Owoyemi, OmniBranches has served over a million customers. He expressed his enthusiasm at the funding, saying it will be used to tackle poverty and enhance financial inclusion.

“Through this investment, Infibranches plans to speed up customer acquisition in its current markets. This will also improve existing products like Omnibranches, which has served over a million customers and introduce new products and services to address energy distribution issues,” the CEO said.

Infibranches enjoys support from The Nigerian Off-Grid Market Acceleration Programme, a not-for-profit initiative backed by UK and USAID.

The fintech has developed a payment system that helps to facilitate payment collection for providers of solar home systems and mini-grid developers through a network of agents across Nigeria. This includes banks and mobile money agents across the payment value chain.

With the new funding, Infibranches also hopes to scale its talent acquisition, product and technology development. Furthermore, it wants to provide capital for business operations.

Speaking on the investment, Shell Foundation CEO, Sam Parker said Infibranches has shown how important it is to continue addressing market barriers, enabling enterprises to more quickly expand their life-changing energy solutions to households and SMEs across Nigeria.

On his part, All On CEO, Wiebe Boer said the company is thrilled with the investment because of Infibranches’ “innovative business model” which solves a plethora of problems.

“We are particularly thrilled about this deal because it’s an innovative business model that solves the payments and collections problems that Solar Home System distributors and mini-grid developers face across Nigeria. This partnership merges fintech and renewables in a way we haven’t seen in Nigeria before and will enable tens of thousands of new electricity connections.”