P2P micro lending marketplace Pezesha wins Seedstars Nairobi

Kenyan peer-to-peer micro lending marketplace Pezesha has been crowned the winner of this year’s Seedstars Nairobi pitching competition.

The sixth edition of the pitching competition took place at Nairobi hub Nailab last Friday (28 June).

In all, nine other startups — namely Ilara Health, Julla, Lentera, Nurse-In-Hand, Pesabase, Shamba Records, Smatbeba, WorkPay and Tanda — were selected to pitch at Seedstars Nairobi.

Pezesha was founded in 2016 by CEO Hilda Moraa

The event, for the first time ever in a Seedstars Africa pitch, featured an all-woman judging panel (see this story). In a post on Facebook on Friday, Seedstars said Pezesha would receive flight tickets to the Seedstars Summit Africa.

At the summit, the startup will participate in a bootcamp and one-on-one meetings with investors and mentors, as well as in Seedstar’s Investment Readiness Programme.

Pezesha was founded in 2016 by CEO Hilda Moraa. The fintech startup connects lenders with high-quality under-served low income borrowers.

Last month, Pezesha was one of the 16 fintech startups from sub-Saharan Africa that made the list for the Inclusive Fintech 50 initiative (see this story). In March last year, Pezesha was one of 12 startups selected to join the first cohort of Google’s Launchpad Accelerator Africa (see this story).

In June 2017, US fintech incubator Digital Financial Services Lab (DFS Lab) announced in a statement that it would invest $250 000 in four startups including Penzesha.

Read more: All-woman panel to select Seedstars Nairobi winner from these 10 Kenyan startups
Read more: Sub-Sahara Africa is top market for those that made Inclusive Fintech 50 list
Read more: Google’s Launchpad Accelerator Africa announces first cohort of 12 startups
Read more: Kenyan insurtech Bluewave takes top honours at 2018 Seedstars Nairobi

Featured image: Seedstars (Twitter)