Wikipedia:Lidya (company)

Lidya is a fintech company and small and medium enterprise (SME) digital lender based in Nigeria.

History
Founded in 2016 in Nigeria by Tunde Kehinde, Lidya has operations in New York, Lagos, Porto, Warsaw, and Prague. As of October 2019, they had provided approximately 10,000 loans in Nigeria. Most their clients are small businesses such as retailers, supermarket owners, boutique stores and pharmacies.

Lidya uses an online scoring system to evaluate small business loan applicants. They distribute microloans as little as $150 with turnaround time of 24 hours.

In 2017, the company participated in the MasterCard Start Path Programme and raised $1.25 million from Accion Venture Lab. In 2018, the company raised $6.9 million in a series A round. Investors included Omidyar Netwo rk, Alitheia Capital, Accion Venture Lab, Bamboo Capital Partners, Newid Capital, and Tekton Ventures.

In 2019, the company started targeting lending in Eastern Europe, including Poland and the Czech Republic, in order to expand.

The company's co-founder and co-CEO, Tunde Kehinde, was interviewed by CNN and Techcrunch.