Grace Ashiru
In the highly competitive early-stage investment sector, few remarks resonate as strongly as those recently made by Charlie Graham-Brown, Chief Investment Officer and Co-founder of Seedstars. Reflecting on the firm’s record-breaking first quarter of 2025, Graham-Brown specifically highlighted one startup: Raenest, a fintech based in Lagos that caters to Africa’s freelance and business payments market.
“Raenest is the only team that tripled before we even invested,” he wrote on LinkedIn. It was both a compliment and a signal—a rare endorsement in the cautious world of global venture capital.
The comment came as Seedstars revealed that four of its portfolio companies had raised a total of $70 million in Series A rounds during Q1, setting a record quarter for the group. Among the four—Cinch, iMotorbike, and OmniRetail Africa. Raenest’s $11 million Series A stood out, not just for its size but for the impressive growth trajectory the company had already shown before securing the funding.
Raenest was founded in 2022 by Victor Alade, Sodruldeen Mustapha, and Richard Oyome as an Employer of Record (EOR) platform with the goal of helping global employers pay African talent in compliance with local regulations. However, the team soon pivoted upon recognizing a more pressing issue: individuals and small businesses facing challenges in receiving international payments
The solution was a financial platform that provides virtual USD, GBP, and EUR accounts, multi-currency wallets, and debit cards to freelancers and businesses across Africa. Raenest claims to have processed over $1 billion in payments, serving more than 700,000 users and 300 businesses.
Raenest’s rapid growth has occurred alongside increasing investor interest in Africa’s digital payments infrastructure. Its Series A round, led by QED Investors and supported by Norrsken22, Ventures Platform, P1 Ventures, and Seedstars, has raised the company’s total funding to $14.3 million.
The Seedstars investment in Raenest reflects a broader trend among early-stage investors in Africa. As digital workforces grow, remittance corridors stay complex, and traditional banks struggle to meet the needs of remote workers and startups, a new wave of financial technology companies is emerging to bridge the gap.
Raenest is not the only startup aiming to serve this market. Competitors like Afriex, Cleva, Fincra, Grey, Verto and Leatherback also offer versions of virtual bank accounts and multi-currency solutions. However, Raenest stands out as one of the few platforms in this space that targets both freelancers and businesses from the start, allowing it to reach a wider user base and diversify its revenue streams.
That strategy seems to be yielding results. Raenest’s corporate clients now include Nigerian scaleups such as Moniepoint, Helium Health, Fez Delivery, and Matta, indicating that the startup is gaining early traction among prominent technology companies across the continent.
Raenest’s success also highlights the growing confidence in Seedstars’ pan-African investment approach. Seedstars Africa Ventures I, which secured a $42 million first close in late 2024, is focusing on early-stage investments throughout the continent, with investment amounts of up to $2 million and follow-on funding of up to $5 million. Backed by the African Development Bank and EIB Global, along with support from the European Union and LBO France, the fund is looking for scalable, tech-driven solutions in diverse sectors, including energy, food systems, and finance.
With offices in Nairobi, Dakar, and Paris, the fund has already invested over $10 million in five companies and is actively seeking additional LPs to reach its $80 million target.
