Kippa makes an edtech play
It’s not every day you get to see a fintech become an edtech.
What? In an interesting turn of events, Kippa, a Nigerian startup which started as a fintech is pivoting to provide edtech services. Kippa’s new edtech play will allow users create new online courses or deliver existing ones in bite-sized formats using AI.
Why? While Kippa’s pivot might have you howling, its pivot remains unsurprising given the startup’s recent turn of events. Kippa laid off 40 of its employees in 2023 after it shut down its agency banking subsidiary, KippaPay. The startup later transferred KippaPay to Nigerian fintech, Bloc, with some of its employees moving to the startup as a result. Kippa also struggled to make severance payments for its laid-off employees after it suffered a ₦30 million ($33,516) internal fraud.
Before the eventual shutdown of KippaPay, the startup made efforts to resuscitate the ailing business. Kippa tried to unify KippaPay with the bookkeeping app. It also tried to monetize its Invoice service, all of which yielded no results.
Zoom out: While its effort to salvage the troubled startup continues, Kippa has embraced an edtech play, putting out a new website that would allow users to produce online courses and deliver those courses using messaging tools like WhatsApp and Telegram. It remains uncertain what Kippa will do to its existing fintech customers..
Kippa is a Nigerian software and financial services company based in Lagos, Nigeria.[1] The company was founded by brothers Kennedy Ekezie and Duke Ekezie.
Kippa was founded in June 2021 by Kennedy Ekezie and Duke Ekezie.[2] The company provides a full-service financial management and payments platforms for small businesses in Nigeria.[3] The company also offers a business incorporation software suite for businesses.[4]
Kippa allows merchants or SMEs to record and track payments made by customers. Kippa offers an automated inventory management and debt collection system. Kippa is currently available only in Nigeria. In September 2022, the company raised $8.4million in seed round to develop products for SMEs.
Kippa’s pivot from financial management and bookkeeping is unsurprising given the company’s struggles in the past year. In 2023, the company laid off 40 employees after a difficult decision to shut down Kippa Pay, its agency banking business. At least two ex-employees said the layoffs were surprising.
“One month before the layoff, in a general meeting, one of my colleagues asked the CEO—Kennedy Ekezie—if there would be job cuts, and he said no,” said an ex-employee.
“I know that the entire engineering team was laid off,” another ex-employee said, claiming that less than ten people are working on the new edtech product.
“Monty Dimpka, who was laid off, rejoined as engineering lead for the new product. There is also a web engineer, a finance manager, a customer-facing staff, and a product manager in India working on the product.”
With this transition, Kippa leaves behind discontinued and unreleased projects. Two employees told TechCabal that before the company shut down its agency banking product, there had been plans to unify it with the bookkeeping app. There were also plans to monetize its Invoice service, but none worked out. “I am rooting for them, though. Kennedy is a great guy.”
KippaPay was later transferred to the Nigerian fintech company Bloc, and some of Kippa’s employees moved to Bloc as part of that process.
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