Nigerian fintech Okra shut down after raising $16M — here's what the CEO told me in February
Two weeks ago, the news broke that Nigerian open finance platform Okra shut down after raising over $16 million from the likes of Base10 Partners, TLcom Capital, Susa Ventures, and others.
But a year ago, in July 2024, the company expanded from open banking into cloud infrastructure — a move that raised some eyebrows at the time.
So, earlier this year, at the end of February, I held a panel discussion on focus vs. diversification in Africa, and asked Okra CEO Fara Ashiru if the company's shift from open finance to cloud services was driven more by opportunity or survival.
Watch what she said in the 2-minute video below 👇🏽
“We found this opportunity because we needed to… It was becoming increasingly harder to run a business that’s sustainable. You see your runway essentially decreasing month over month because, it’s simple math, you’re spending more than you’re bringing in. At a certain point, that was happening regardless of what we were doing or how well we were selling. We were having the same amount of API calls, but essentially revenue was reducing.”
— Fara Ashiru
It was a brutally candid conversation that also included Moulaye Tabouré, CEO & co-founder of Ivorian e-commerce SaaS platform ANKA, and Olusola Amusan, CEO & co-founder of Nigerian immigrant-focused neobank Vesti.
The full discussion is now available on Youtube here 👇🏽
Watch it to learn:
Why market realities in Africa often demand adaptability over focus
How to balance investor expectations with market realities
The importance of “going faster to the pain” in business
Why customer pain points often reveal the best diversification opportunities
Real mistakes these founders made and what they’d do differently
WHAT’S NEXT
Join me on Thursday, July 17th at 3pm WAT/5pm EAT/10am EST for a virtual panel discussion on the future of payments in Africa with:
Wiza Jalakasi, Director of Africa Market Development at Brazilian payments unicorn EBANX
Mathias Léopoldie, CEO & Co-founder at Ivorian B2B payments platform Julaya
Francis Ogbuka, VP of Sales & Business Development at Nigerian blockchain-powered payments infrastructure platform Zone
Thanks for reading Afridigest 💌
