Jumo, a financial services company with operations across emerging markets, has secured an additional $12.5 million in funding. The funding came from Odey Asset Management. In addition, James Hanbury, Partner at Odey Asset Management, joined the Board of JUMO.
Odey Asset Management is a, London-based investment firm. It manages capital for institutional investors, wealth managers, private banks and professional investors.
According to the press release, this investment marks the formal close of JUMO’s most recent equity funding round. The company had earlier in September, raised US$52 million with Goldman Sachs as the principal lead investor. Proparco, Finnfund, Vostok Emerging Finance, Gemcorp Capital and LeapFrog Investments participated in that round too.
The $12.5 million will go towards developing JUMO’s technology platform, support market expansion and deepen data capabilities. Specifically, the company is looking at applied ML and AI innovation to "accelerate financial inclusion, across JUMO’s key markets in Africa and Asia".
JUMO currently has offices in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Zambia, Pakistan, United Kingdom, Singapore and South Africa. It set up its Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore earlier in the year and has plans to enter several new Asian markets in 2019.
They set up an Asia headquarter in Singapore earlier this year. And, Andrew Watkins-Ball, the CEO of JUMO has relocated to Singapore to oversee the expansion.
"In October, the company was also a new entrant in the 2018 CB Insights Fintech 250 list which tracks the most promising financial technology companies globally."
Following the close of this funding round, JUMO has now raised in excess of $103 million in lifetime funding. Over 62% of this amount was raised this year alone.
Since the company's launch in 2014, more than 10 million people have saved or borrowed on the JUMO platform, with nearly 70% of these being micro and small business owners across Africa and Asia. To date, JUMO has originated almost US$1 billion in loans and maintained savings growth of over 50% month-on-month on its platform, which manages over 45 million customer interactions per month.
JUMO recently announced its partnership with Uber through its JUMO Drive product. A digital vehicle finance product that eases barriers to car ownership for existing Uber driver-partners. Though they also have plans to expand this to other ride-hailing firms across Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.