Nigeria’s ThankUCash, A Loyalty Rewards Startup Raises $5.3m

ThankUCash, a startup founded in 2018 has made waves after closing a funding round of $5.3 million. Other startups that have made the news are either fintech, health-tech or startups in major categories. ThankUCash, although it is not in a category considered as major, the startup has managed to thrive since it first appeared and has done well with funding. The startup is very important in the African space because loyalty, deals and rewards services are not common on the continent. A lot of factors hinder these kinds of services from thriving, so it is really important that against all odds, ThankUCash is vying into providing these services and is pulling it off brilliantly.

ThankUCash was launched by Connected Analytics and founded by Simon Ononobi, Suraj Supekar, Madonna Ononobi and Harshal Gandol. The startup first announced its seed round last year and has closed it at $5.3 million. The round led by venture capital firms 500 Global and Unicorn Growth Capital, saw the participation of Predictive VC, SaaS Growth Ventures, Betatron Venture Group, Accelerex Holdings, Expert Dojo and individual investors Craig Fenton and Andrew Dell.

The new funding will be used to fuel its expansion plans. The company plans to expand its operations across Nigeria and also in Ghana and Kenya. The company will also improve its product offerings and hire more talent.

ThankUCash wants to revolutionize the customer loyalty and rewards system, which was almost inexistent, by providing merchants with an opportunity to tap into the customer rewards system which means increased sales and retention of customers. Many businesses in Nigeria would love to tap into this but they may don’t have all the data they need, as well as be able to handle the challenges that come with it. This is where ThankUCash comes in.

ThankUCash, apart from providing merchants with a lot of benefits will also be very instrumental for customers, especially those that have always wanted to earn from being loyal customers. With ThankUCash, customers can get to receive rewards from various merchants as long as they are listed on ThankUCash, and there are thousands of merchants listed on there…

Prior to its recently-closed seed round, the startup raised $320,000 in a pre-seed round that saw participation from Microtraction, Ventures Platform, 500 Startups, Google Lauchpad. This made it gain quite some amount of attention from investors who saw an opportunity in the startup. The interest in the startup was evident in its seed round.

The startup also will be delving into buy-now-pay-later services so that customers can finance their purchases. Buy-now-pay-later services have become increasingly popular, but in Africa, it is still not common. Speaking about the next stage for the company, CEO Simon Ononobi said that “We are creating solutions that help SMEs succeed while increasing consumer buying power and opportunities. We want to build an infrastructure for rewards, loyalty, deals, buy now, pay later, cashback”.

“Cashback was our low hanging fruit and an entry point. We’re still going to go into deals, couponing, gift cards, buy now, pay later, anything that will help the business grow, but at the same time, allowing the consumer increase in opportunities of buying”, he added emphasizing that ThankUCash will do the same thing that startups like Flutterwave and Paystack did in Africa.

The startup claims to have more than 600,000 users and 1,000 stores on its platform. It also said that it has processed more than $80 million in transaction volume.