Chari, the Moroccan e-commerce and B2B retail startup, secured a seed round at a $100 million valuation. The round welcomed new investors Khwarizmi Ventures, Air Angels and Afri Mobility, the venture capital arm of AKWA Group. They join existing investors: Y Combinator, Rocket Internet, Global Founders Capital, Plug n Play, Orange Ventures, Harvard University Management Company, Village Capital and P1 Ventures.
The latter had invested in Chari’s $5 million seed round last October to $70 million. “Chari will use the money from this round to test BNPL’s services with its existing clients. If successful, Chari will acquire a local loan company to allow store owners to lend money to their end users and further grow their business.”, Chief Executive Ismael Belkhayat said in a statement.
BNPL’s services are beginning to experience strong growth in Africa due to the rapid penetration of e-commerce and the effects of the pandemic. Once the startup is operational in Morocco, it plans to expand this BNPL service to Tunisia and other French-speaking countries in Africa.