Interswitch Funded The Kenya Based OkHi’s Expansion Across West Africa

OkHi LTD, the Kenya based smart addressing company, has recently expanded its services across the emerging West African mapping marketplace, with the funds it received from Interswitch, its major investor.

The mapping service serves as a solution to the poor addressing infrastructure in Africa that has specifically affected Nigerian businesses to have recorded losses worth up to $2 billion annually due to the lack of proper postal addressing.

The Kenya based mapping service is designed with the 4th generation technology that gives an enterprise the access to connect to its address verification engine, which then collects its customer’s address and processes it for verification to enable additional accessibilities.

Prior to launching its services in Nigeria, OkHi LTD was co-founded by Timbo Drayson in 2014, who has developed quite an interesting career overtime in the emerging mapping market. He was a Google employee who led his team of developers that introduced Google Map as the digital navigator platform, and he was also involved in developing Chromecast.

However, the Africa high profiled e-commerce and FinTech company Interswitch is not the only investor that funded the OkHi’s recent expansions towards West Africa, other investors include Betatron (an Asian venture capital firm), and Founders Factory Africa was the three investors that accumulated the $1.5 million issued to OkHi to further its business operation.

Initially, the smart mapping/addressing platform realized the sum of $1.78 million, but the other investors lost interest for some undisclosed reasons.

Interswitch is reported to influence 40% of OkHi’s decision to proceed with its Nigerian branch because they also partnered with the smart addressing company’s West African expansion.

The poor addressing infrastructure in Nigeria is acknowledged as a devastating experience whereby other socio-economic parastatals cannot access accurate addressing to track clients or customers.

For instance, banks habitually send agents to re-confirm a potential customer’s address. The emergency service usually gets lost, resulting in mortality, or the logistics personnel who also get lost trying to navigate through inaccurate addressing systems.

Drayson said “We are so excited about the start of our Nigerian journey. With Interswitch, we have a partner and investor whose technology has already had a massive impact on millions of Nigerians. Their expertise and infrastructure will position us to scale country-wide as quickly as possible.”

Overtime, the smart addressing company, has successfully influenced the mapping marketplace in its host country Kenya – in the logistics sector, OkHi has been responsive in lessening the cost of delivery by 20% and has completed rounds of delivery by 4% due to smart addressing technology that serves as the first of its kind to function in the axis of Africa that simultaneously cut down risks, cost and time.

OkHi LTD mapping services are not limited to accessing places but also tracks and connects to people’s location “From e-commerce businesses, to banks and emergency service,” while utilizing the efficiency of digital technology exceptionally at these pandemic times.

He said “COVID-19 is accelerating the digital migration across Africa – people and businesses are more online than ever, while home deliveries have grown exponentially.”

The Kenyan startup smart addressing company has been active in the Nigerian marketplace with a perceptible list of customers such as Zedvance, Kuda Bank, and Okra.