Microtraction, a Nigerian early-stage investment platform, has announced its first two investments–CowryWise and Bitkoin Africa. The amount of each investment has not been disclosed but Microtraction, which was launched in July 2017, plans to invest US$65,000 in startups at the very earliest stage of their development.
CowryWise operates an automated personal savings service. With a debit/ATM card, the platform automatically saves from the users’ bank accounts into their CowryWise accounts. Whether it’s saving for a child’s education, a vacation or new home, users can create as many saving plans as they wish.
Microtraction believes CowryWise has a massive opportunity for growth as its product solves a genuine problem which the existing competition find difficult to offer. According to the Founder and Managing Partner of Microtraction, Yele Bademosi, “They need to scale very fast over the next 12-18 months and continue to increase the customers they have on the platform.”
Bitkoin Africa, on the other hand, is a Lagos-based Person-to-Person (P2P) cryptocurrency trading platform where users can sell and buy cryptocurrency from other users. The platform offers users an easy and secure way to trade bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, and bitcoin cash in Africa. Users are assured of instant settlements on all trades, without the need to communicate with corresponding buyers or sellers. This makes them the only Bitcoin exchange platform to bring instant payments and settlements on all Bitcoin trades to Africa.
Despite the downward spiral of cryptocurrencies, Bademosi insists that “Our investment in Bitkoin Africa is the true definition of Microtraction. I believe when a good opportunity, in this case, a large, fast-growing market, meets a good entrepreneur, great things happen.” He added that “This investment is about convexity, that is, we have limited downside and unlimited upside. The downside is the total loss of our investment capital but the upside is being able to play a role in helping build a company that democratises not just access to cryptocurrencies, but an open financial infrastructure that has the potential to enable a variety of things from remittances, credit, insurance, capital formation to decentralised store of value. I believe that the founders of Bitkoin Africa are well suited to navigate the opportunities or challenges to come.”
Interestingly, there is more to come as the investment platform has disclosed that more investments will be announced in the coming weeks.
