Building the Future of FinTech

At the Intersection of TradFi and DeFi

Propelling category-leading companies fueling an inclusive digital economy

"Our Mantra"
Every company should be a fintech company
We help ambitious founders reinvent industries and transform financial services.

We help companies mobilize FinTech to reinvent and digitize all industries and financial services.

We aspire for FinTech to fuel a new open and financially inclusive economy adding billions to GDP.

Our Mantra

Every company should be a FinTech company.

We partner with ambitious founders to reinvent industries and transform the financial infrastructure of the digital economy.

Customer focused

Value oriented

Data obsessed

People centric

What we do

Unicorn Growth Capital is a pioneer FinTech VC firm

Thesis-Driven

Thesis-driven investing in early-stage FinTech-enabled companies (Seed to Series A).

Thesis-Driven

Thesis-driven investing in early-stage FinTech-enabled companies (Seed to Series A).

Mobile-Based Economy

Bridging Africa’s fast-growing mobile-based economies with the global digital ecosystem.

Mobile-Based Economy

Bridging Africa’s fast-growing mobile-based economies with the global digital ecosystem.

VC Ecosystem

Driving an inclusive economy and diverse VC ecosystem backing diverse and female founders.

VC Ecosystem

Driving an inclusive economy and diverse VC ecosystem backing diverse and female founders.

What we do

We are value-add investors in emerging global champions

Thesis-Driven

Investing in early-stage FinTech & Web3.0-enabled companies, leveraging emerging technologies and providing critical infrastructure and embedded finance across industries

Bridging Africa & Emerging Economies with Developed Markets

Globally scalable companies integrating fast-growing, mobile-first economies with high crypto adoption, with the global financial ecosystem

Diverse

Driving an inclusive economy by financially empowering underserved consumers and businesses. Promoting a diverse VC ecosystem by backing underrepresented and female founders

Our Focus

We provide you the use of emerging technologies

We focus on companies that are data-driven, built for the API economy, use emerging technologies (AI, blockchain, IOT) and are strategically valuable to the digital ecosystem.

FinTech Infrastructure
– API-based and Embeddable financial infrastructure
– Decentralized infrastructure
Embedded Finance
– Vertical SAAS players applying FinTech solutions to their industry
– Enterprise / SMB Software with embedded financial services
Digital Financial Services
– Vertical SAAS players applying FinTech solutions to their industry

Our Focus

We invest in companies that solve major challenges and are strategically valuable to the digital ecosystem

FinTech Infrastructure

• API-based
• Embeddable
• Crypto /Blockchain

Embedded Finance

• Vertical SAAS
• Enterprise / SMB Software
• Marketplace

Digital Financial Services

• B2C Digital Natives

FinTech & DeFi Infrastructure

• API-based
• Embeddable
• Crypto /Blockchain

Embedded Finance

• Vertical SAAS
• Enterprise / SMB Software
• Marketplace
• Web3 & DeFi platforms

Digital Financial Services

• B2C Digital Natives

Our Companies

We’ve supported leading companies that have built the financial rails to power the digital economy

Banking automation software and decentralised payments platform

Fintech Infrastructure

AppZone is a fintech software provider building out the core infrastructure for digital financial services in Africa. The company provides banking software-as-a-service to banks, fintechs and financial service providers in 5 African countries.

Team: Obi Emetarom, Emeka Emetarom, Wale Onawunmi

Our Companies

We’ve supported leading companies that have built the financial rails to power the digital economy

Banking automation software and decentralised payments platform

Fintech Infrastructure

Team: Obi Emetarom, Emeka Emetarom, Wale Onawunmi

AI-powered lending-as-a-service and analytics platform

Fintech Infrastructure

Indicina’s platform helps banks, MFBs and FinTech companies to manage their retail lending by digitising their customer onboarding, loan origination, credit decisioning and portfolio management.

Team: Yvonne Johnson, Carlos del Carpio

Cross-border payments and digital banking platform

Fintech Infrastructure

VertoFX is a leading enterprise and marketplace platform for FX exchanges and cross-border financial services. The company’s cross-border payments and digital banking infrastructure is helping to make cross-border trade cheaper, faster and safer.

Team: Anthony Oduwole, Ola Oyetayo

Payment platform digitizing microtransactions in cash-based industries

Fintech Infrastructure

Tap is a leading B2B2C provider of payment infrastructure for cash-based industries, allowing customers to pay for products and services offline and online, using cards (NFC technology) or a mobile phone app.

Team: Oluwole Michael, Afolabi Olamide

Merchant payments and loyalty infrastructure

Fintech Infrastructure

Largest interoperable multi-merchant loyalty and cashback platform for customers and businesses. They leverage data to provide valuable customer insights and analytics to businesses.

Team: Simeon Ononobi, Suraj Supekar, Madonna Ononobi, Harshal Gandole

Digital money On-ramp platform

Fintech Infrastructure

Fonbnk enables prepaid mobile users to convert their airtime credits into digital money. Users can access, earn, transfer, pay, and save money easily, from the comfort of their mobile devices.

Team: Christian Duffus, Sergey Shevchuk, Sam McMurray

Open finance rails and standardized financial data API gateway

Fintech Infrastructure

Credrails aggregates financial data from multiple online and offline sources and makes the unified data available to businesses via an API. Deep analytics provides businesses with the intelligence they need to make informed decisions, unlock new revenue streams, and increase market share.

Team: Clara Wanjiku Odero, Teresia Kairu

Automated receivable management platform

Fintech Infrastructure

Churpy is an integrated receivables management product that connects customer bank accounts to ERP systems and helps businesses reduce their costs by automating manual payment reconciliation processes, managing cash flows by reducing outstanding payments and bad debts with real-time visibility of cash positions on a dashboard.

Team: John Kiptum, Kennedy Mukuna

Spend Management & Digital Banking for businesses

Sava is a digital banking platform that provides integrated expense management, invoice management, and digital banking on one platform.
They enable businesses to open bank accounts, operate mobile wallets, integrate directly into accounting software, and issue cards.

Team: Yoeal Haile, Michael Michie, Federico Von Bary Landesmann

Our Team

Experienced Investors and Operators

Barbara Iyayi

CEO and Founding Partner

Maria Pienaar

Operating Partner

Duncan Muchangi

Principal

We help companies
scale and win

Experienced company builders

We are a team of experienced investors and company builders with more than 50 years of combined work experience in Financial Services, Telecommunications and Technology sectors. We pride ourselves as being a supportive, hands-on partner with first-hand operator experience across Africa and globally.

Strategic relationships in the FinTech ecosystem

Through strategic partnerships, we enable collaborations with key stakeholders such as banks, telecoms, corporates, regulators and other FinTech players. We also aim to drive collaborations between our portfolio companies to generate synergies and bolster their customer base in addition to providing regulatory and policy guidance in our target markets.

Domain expertise

We help companies enhance their business strategies by sharing best practices on financial services and FinTech-driven business models. Our network of advisors and operator mentors deliver their expertise on FinTech products and advanced technologies to deepen capabilities for leveraging non-biased AI models, blockchain, and cybersecurity. We provide proven go-to-market strategies into target FinTech/banking markets and regions in Africa and emerging markets.

"Unicorn Growth Capital came highly recommended. We are currently mapping out a Crypto/Blockchain strategy and it became clearer after Unicorn Growth introduced us to Celo. They had a robust team and a clear understanding of how to help us reach our goals. Without Unicorn and the understanding of our vision that would not have been an easy task. Very responsive and clear. It's not all VCs that you can send a WhatsApp message and get a reply almost immediately."

Simeon OnonobiCEO

“We chose to partner with Unicorn Growth due to their pedigree as ex-operators, local network and expertise in Africa, they have been a good addition to our investor base and have been incredibly helpful and responsive with opening their network to help us with all our initiatives”

OLA OYETAYOCEO

"The UGC Team has been a great partner to work with. Their culture, process and unique hands-on approach have been instrumental in helping many startup founders become leaders in their space. Beyond access to capital, they have provided significant guidance as we react to market conditions, and I wholeheartedly recommend them as a superb choice for early-stage entrepreneurs.”

Michael OluwoleCEO