Autochek acquires CoinAfrique to boost its francophone Africa existence

Autochek, the Nigerian pan-African automotive technological innovation organization, introduced on Wednesday that it has acquired CoinAfrique, a classified market in francophone African nations, for an undisclosed total to speed up penetration of its car financing providers in the region, specifically in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire.

Autochek would seem to be  on an acquisition spree as this new buyout is coming a little about a thirty day period considering that the enterprise introduced the acquisition of Moroccan automotive tech startup KIFAL autos, a deal that would start its foray into the North African industry.   

CoinAfrique was originally founded in Benin in 2016 by Matthias Papet and Eric Genetre, and it promptly grew into other francophone African nations around the world. The firm now has a existence in 10 nations around the world in the area like its 2 most significant economies—Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal. 

About the years, CoinAfrique has grown to develop into the quantity a person classified marketplace for francophone Africa, enabling enterprises and folks to seamlessly purchase and offer autos, electronics, actual estate, and other items. According to a assertion shared with TechCabal, the CoinAfrique application has been downloaded more than 2 million moments, with 800,000 monthly active buyers and 60,000 new product listings for every month. The CoinAfrique internet site, on the other hand, gets more than 1.5 million visits per thirty day period. 

CoinAfrique, which was a undertaking-backed startup and has raised about $3.1 million in funding, was in the market place for both funding or a merger and acquisition (M&A) deal. Ultimately it went for the M&A. In accordance to Papet who spoke to TechCabal around a zoom simply call, the decision was centered on the “conviction this is the deal we want to just take the corporation to the following level”. 

Papet explained CoinAfrique’s classifieds small business will proceed to operate across the several solution categories, with a deep integration of Autochek’s auto funding products to push entry to credit rating for automotive buys. He also claimed 50% of the enterprise transacted on the CoinAfrique platform is presently happening in the automotive category—this a lot more than just about anything describes this deal—and now, leveraging on Autochek’s technological innovation, CoinAfrique can provide entry to automobile funding and other benefit-included products and services. 

“We are excited about the possibility to push the penetration of automobile funding across francophone Africa and to help the broader mission throughout Africa,” explained Papet. “We see several alternatives to unlock worth for users across all the categories on our platform and to increase into new countries, and we are searching ahead to leveraging Autochek’s market top financial loans merchandise and experience to deliver far more transformative ordeals for our end users.”

“Matthias and Eric are pioneers of the classifieds design in Africa and they have built an remarkable platform with numerous considerable partnerships with car or truck sellers, fintech platforms and other stakeholders in the francophone automotive sector,” Etop Ikpe, CEO and co-founder of Autochek, mentioned in the assertion. “They are signing up for the Autochek family with lots of a long time of company and infrastructure development expertise throughout Europe and Africa, and we are searching forward to leveraging their knowledge to make improvements to the automotive finance benefit proposition throughout the continent.” 

Francophone Africa is home to 2 of the top rated 10 speediest-developing cities on the continent—Côte d’Ivoire’s Abidjan and Senegal’s Dakar. Côte d’Ivoire also doubles as a person of the fastest escalating brand new vehicle marketplaces in Africa. 

With this acquisition, Autochek, which was now operational in Côte d’Ivoire prior to the deal, said in the assertion that it will leverage CoinAfrique’s considerable database across francophone Africa to aid vehicle financing for consumers and SMEs across this location to purchase their wished-for autos. It said it will also assist further integration of the Pan-African automotive industry to push shared value for buyers, makers, money institutions, and other stakeholders.

By now, with this streak of acquisitions, it is turning into evident that Autochek is creating the financial infrastructure powerhouse that would drive the penetration of auto financing throughout Africa, run by a facts analytics engine that helps make it much easier for economic establishments to offer credit to customers. This acquisition extends the company’s footprint into 9 more nations, and with its existing markets—Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, and Uganda—makes it operational in 15 international locations, in whole. 

The corporation has robust retail partnerships of more than 1,500 vendor and workshop areas across its markets, and more than 70 banking companions which include Access Financial institution, BNP Paribas, Ecobank, UBA, Lender of Africa and NCBA Financial institution. 

Papet informed TechCabal that when he and his co-founder Genetre will  be joining Autochek’s management crew, the full CoinAfrique staff will go on to perform as a subsidiary of Autochek, supporting its overarching mission to make motor vehicle ownership more accessible and affordable throughout the continent.