Grey — the Nigerian startup FinTech company completed a pre-seed round discreetly celebrating a successful fundraising exercise. Grey reportedly got enlisted in Y Combinator’s 2022 winter batch accelerator program after the FinTech startup reported its closed pre-seed round.
The Nigerian FinTech startup was developed by Femi Aghedo and Idorenyin Obong to process instant foreign exchange to Naira. Grey debuted its FinTech operations during the 2020 global lockdown that influenced the FinTech socio-economic status to experience a continuous surge to date.
The Nigerian Naira features as a custom currency on Grey’s exchange network — a systematic means for Nigerians to spend Naira in a domiciliary account.
Grey’s FinTech operations are set to relieve Nigerians of the dependable stress to consort with licensed financial institutions or local foreign exchange market also known as “Bureau de Change, BDC,” that charges an expensive rate per exchange.
“Grey set out to build an MVP so everybody who has a domiciliary account would be able to exchange that foreign currency to naira.” Grey’s CEO, Idorenyin Obong revealed the essence to develop an instantaneous foreign fiat exchange “for everybody who had naira and wanted foreign currency should be able to get it in their domiciliary accounts.”
Remember Grey was formerly christened “Aboki Africa” at the time it gained national limelight. Investors influenced the FinTech brand name change to be more formal which is likely to attract international users — several bids were posted to adopt “Grey” as an international friendly brand name.
Grey’s name change was breaking news at the time. Until the FinTech management announced Y Combinator’s consent to accelerating its FinTech solutions for instant foreign fiat exchange.
Grey happens to be keener with Y Combinator’s endorsement — even though the Nigerian FinTech startup is yet to receive its entitled funds to accelerate its operations.
Grey’s FinTech solutions enlisted in Y Combinator’s Accelerator Program obliterated the Ingressive Capital’s offering that led Grey’s pre-seed round. Grey’s current developmental phase depicts the FinTech startup is on the edge to receive Y Combinator’s piece of investment and then supervised as another project on the Silicon Valley’s AUM list of African startups.
Grey has purportedly fused virtual account domiciliated overseas to accepted Naira for exchange for other foreign legal tenders, such as US Dollars, Euros, Pounds, and other disposable hard currencies available for an average Nigeria to process a BDC transaction.
Grey’s instant exchange network is available for Nigerians based overseas, in diaspora, and locally
Grey’s exchange service generates its revenue from the one percent fee it charges for a successful domiciliary transaction. Grey has experienced a 36% revenue growth that increased by another 30% after two of its debut in 2020.
Grey’s FinTech startup has reportedly joined the list of African startups drafted for Silicon Valley’s AUM project for the year — this batch to receive accelerated investment is dubbed YC W22.
The Y Combinator Accelerator winter Program for 2022 already listed three progressive startups from Nigeria, including, Moni, TopShip, and IdentityPass. Grey is the fourth Nigerian startup enlisted so far to participate in YC W22, Techbooky writes.
