Nigeria’s Booking Keeping Platform For Merchants, Pastel, Raises $5.5M

Pastel, a US-headquartered and Lagos-based bookkeeping platform, has raised $5.5M led by pan-African venture capital firm TLcom Capital. Other VC firms such as Global Founders Capital (GFC), Golden Palm Investments, DFS Labs, Ulu Ventures, Plug and Play, and Soma Cap also participated in the seed round.

Pastel, formerly known as Sabi Cash, is a digital bookkeeping app that allows small businesses to monitor and manage their transactions and customers, get insights into their cashflows, issue receipts, and effectively manage customers who owe them. Abuzar Royesh, Olamide Oladeji, and Izunna Okonkwo founded the digital platform.

Launched in 2021, Pastel has recorded over 100,000 merchant sign-ups by December 2021, and its app currently has more than 45,000 active merchant users. Additionally, the bookkeeping and customer relationship management platform has included two features to the chain, Quick Receipt, and Pastel Financing. However, these two features will act as standalone products.

“Our thought process was as soon as we got traction, the next step was to capture some value. So we added features to the Sabi app and what we’re building now is a little bit more,” Okonkwo said about the company’s decision to build three standalone platforms instead of coupling them all into one app. “The way we’ve thought about it is, as opposed to creating a super app that a lot of other fintechs have or are in pursuit of, we are taking a more platform approach, meaning that any Pastel user can sign up with any of our apps with the same login and access all of the other solutions that we’re providing.”

“As a team, we are taking a product-led growth approach where we iterate after doing massive amounts of research into how users use the solutions and what they are asking for,” said the co-founder. The new capital will assist Pastel in increasing its efforts in this area. It looks to expand its product offerings and develop more productivity and finance management features and tools around group savings, loans, and payments for small businesses.