Cameroon Crypto Startup, Ejara, Raises $8 million Series A Round – Sees 10x Grow...

Ejara, a crypto startup based in Cameroon, has raised $8 million in a Series A round co-led by London-based investment firm, Anthemis, alongside crypto-focused fund, Dragonfly Capital.

𝐍𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐝'𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐫𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞́𝐞 𝐝𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐝𝐞 𝐬𝐞́𝐫𝐢𝐞 𝐀.#Ejara pic.twitter.com/o5De9A3xCK

— Ejara – Nous recrutons, DM ! (@EjaraApp) November 28, 2022

Investors in the round features repeat and new investors including:

• Mercy Corps Ventures (previous investor)
• Coinshares Ventures (previous investor)
• Lateral Capital (previous investor)
• Anthemis (previous investor)
• BlockWorks (previous investor)
• DragonFly Capital
• Circle Ventures
• Moonstake
• Emurgo
• Hashkey Group
• BPI France

Jason Yanowitz, the co-founder of Blockworks, is one of the angels in the round, Techcrunch reported.

Ejara offers full control of one’s crypto assets by providing non-custodial wallets that let users own and store their keys so they can securely buy, sell, exchange, and store their crypto investments.

The startup has experienced significant growth since October 2021 when it raised a $2 million round led by CoinShares Ventures and Anthemis Group together with Mercy Corps Ventures, Ledger, and Blockworks.

In October 2021, Ejara had 8,000 users from Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, and Senegal. It currently has more than 70,000 users across 9 Francophone African countries. A key reason behind Ejara’s growth is due to it providing users access to crypto from their mobile money accounts as well as a way to make cross-border transactions via stablecoins.

Congratulations @EjaraApp for the $8M raise to expand the product across the African continent and beyond!

Here is a recap with CEO @chakaneld as she discussed about expansion plans in early 2022 during an exclusive interview with BitKE. pic.twitter.com/fIqBK1eUcR

— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) December 1, 2022

Ejara has also seen 10x revenue growth and achieved a 15% month-on-month transaction volume growth since October 2021 despite crypto’s meltdown.

CEO Nelly Chatue-Diop expects users on the platform to reach 100,000 by the end of 2022.

The startup has also recently introduced a savings product where it tokenizes government bonds that users can invest in by downloading the Ejara app and depositing a minimum of 1,000 CFA franc (~$1.5).  Users can earn up to 10% interest on their two-year deposits on the platform, said CEO, Chatue-Diop.

The savings product goes back to Ejara’s mission of democratizing financial services as Chatue-Diop points out.

“The competition for treasury bonds is with the traditional asset managers and banks. And given the way they are structured, they mainly target high-net-worth individuals and institutions like other banks or insurance companies.

Nobody is targeting the woman selling in the markets or the man driving a motorbike for a living. And because we structure the product the way we do, we have many people come to our platform because they can save up to 1,000 CFA franc daily.” – CEO, Ejara

Ejara, which is also expanding its services to the French-speaking diaspora in Europe, is seen as a financial super-app in the long term rather than just a crypto platform.

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The cryptocurrency market exploded in 2017, growing from an $18 billion market cap to over $600 billion at its peak by the end of the year. 

This massive growth led to new interest in the space and speculation about how big the market would become in the future. In 2018, cryptocurrencies fell into a sharp decline that has many people wondering if the bubble had popped. 

Today, the industry is experiencing another major drawdown coming off a year that saw several bankruptcies and liquidations, let alone increasing scams and crypto theft.

While crypto’s problems look worse during the bear market, even during the better times, players and users in the industry faced several problems that have threated the adoption of cryptocurrencies. 

Some of the key challenges the crypto industry faces today include the following:

Lack of Liquidity

The cryptocurrency market has a lack of liquidity because there are not enough buyers or sellers at any given time. 

In a buyers and sellers market, when one side of the equation disappears, it causes an imbalance that requires time for the other side of buyers or sellers to enter the market. 

This causes extreme volatility in cryptocurrency prices which may be very difficult for some people who want stability in their investments. 

The solution?

Place trade orders with specific sizes ahead of time so as not to miss out on opportunities when they arise.

High Transaction Costs

One of the major challenges that cryptocurrencies face today is high transaction costs. This can make it difficult for cryptocurrency users to use them in everyday transactions. 

One way that cryptocurrencies have been addressing this issue is by implementing technology that can limit transaction size and make it easier for more transactions to be processed at a time. 

Another issue with high transaction costs is scalability, meaning how quickly a system can process transactions.

This becomes an important concern as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin continue to grow in popularity. There are two proposed solutions:

• Off-chain solutions
• On-chain solutions

which both help provide scalability by allowing more transactions per second at a higher fee per transaction.

Lack of Trust in This Market

To deal with this issue, we must create a marketplace where users can trust each other. Implementing an escrow system would allow buyers and sellers to transact with confidence knowing that the transaction has been verified by a third party. 

With most blockchain protocols, such as Dogecoin (DOGE) and Flow (FLOW), transactions are encrypted in such a way that they cannot be changed or hacked. This gives users peace of mind when conducting transactions on their marketplaces while encouraging more people to enter the cryptocurrency market as they will feel safer when making purchases or engaging in blockchain-based games. 

Poor User Experience & A Lack of Regulation

Poor user experience encompasses several pain points that customers experience when interacting with crypto. These include:

• Scams
• Poor user interface (UI)
• Poor security

While the world of cryptocurrency has become very popular in recent years, it still remains challenging for people who are new to the market or have a general lack of understanding of how it works. There are many things that are unclear right now as well such as regulations. 

A lack of regulation can be both good and bad depending on what country you live in, but most people would agree that it would be nice if there were clearer rules set out by governments. This way, cryptocurrencies could be used more easily and without any worry about breaking laws.

In conclusion…

Despite these troubles, there are many reasons to believe that cryptocurrencies will continue to grow exponentially over the long term as cryptocurrencies become more widely used by consumers and businesses around the world. 

Nonetheless, these problems call for solutions that would help to make the industry even stronger going into 2023.

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