Orda raises $3.4 million to improve its digital restaurant management in Africa
Orda, an African restaurant cloud operating system provider, today announced that it has raised a $3.4 million seed round to help small restaurants gain more value by further digitizing food businesses across the continent.
This announcement comes less than a year after the startup raised $1.1 million in funding, bringing its total funds raised to $4.5 million.
This new seed round was led by Quona Capital and FinTech Collective and saw participation from institutional investors including Far Out Ventures and Outside VC, angels
Doneci Kone and Julian Shapiro, and follow-up investment from the Norrsken Foundation, Lofty Inc
Capital and Enza Capital.
Orda intends to improve its services to help more African restaurants maximize their business operations and expand distribution with this new funding. Loan, credit and payment options will also be enhanced while helping customers maximize the value of their business.
Kofoworola Agbaje, Senior Investment Associate at Quona Capital, spoke about their motivations for participating in this funding round and the impact Orda aims to have on the African food industry.
“When a restaurant owner goes from pen and paper to a fully automated digital platform, it’s incredibly empowering. Suddenly, they have insights that can improve their productivity and margins, enabling them to grow their business.”
A solution like Orda can have an overall impact on small and medium-sized restaurants and the livelihoods of those who run them, and we at Quona are delighted to support Orda in this important work.
Kofoworola Agbaje
With the help of this solution, the opportunity to capitalize on Africa’s largest consumer segment and at the same time create an operating system valued for and by small and medium-sized African restaurants becomes possible.
Also Read: Nigeria’s Orda Raises $1.1M Pre-Seed Fund To Expand Its Restaurant Management Services
About Orda
Founded by Guy Futi, Fikayo Akinwale, Mark Edomwande, Kunle Ogungbamila and Namir El-
Khouri in 2020, Orda’s vision is to assist small-scale African restaurants to optimize their operations and achieve sustainable growth.
Orda addresses difficulties faced by small food businesses, such as daily manual reconciliation, inventory management and other administrative activities. The startup helps restaurants optimize operations, scale distribution and understand customer behavior with advanced business analytics.
These goals are achieved through a variety of products, which include kitchen display systems, order and inventory management, integrations with top food aggregators, accounting software, microsites, mobile apps, etc.,
These services have been incredibly beneficial to many food industry owners in helping them manage and optimize their operations. Commenting on Orda’s intention to increase the restaurant’s operational efficiency, Modupe Alimi, head of Korede Spaghetti, said:
Before, we couldn’t keep track of inventory and orders because we weren’t that organized. With Orda, we can now keep everything in one account. We know everything that goes out through [pick-up] orders and delivery. We do not need to employ more employees than necessary and this has made us more profitable.
This is an immediate efficiency boost for restaurants with Orda, and their services also provide food business owners with a roadmap that includes embedded payments and credit that creates a method to access cash flow even through a large food industry.
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Orda growth and plans for the African food industry
With over 600 restaurants as customers in Nigeria and Kenya, the startup claims to process over 500% more weekly orders for its customers and aims to reach 1,000 restaurants in the next three months.
The company claims that its focus on helping small and medium-sized restaurants manage their operations more efficiently is the reason for this success.
This may be the case given that while they make up the majority of the $50 billion food service business in Africa, small independent restaurants have had limited access to technological solutions tailored to their needs.
Orda is particularly convenient as the application can work offline and its ePos can work in remote areas with little or no internet service. Data is synchronized with the cloud application when the restaurant is online again. This is what sets it apart from other cloud-based solutions, especially with the level of maximum functionality found in the operating system.
Commenting on Orda’s vision goals, Guy Futi, CEO and co-founder, said,
From day one, Orda has been focused on building solutions for small and medium-sized restaurants. These businesses operate on slim profit margins, and the power of Orda’s software and financial solutions can catapult their business. Our goal is to provide end-to-end
solutions that help them optimize their operations so that they become more prosperous.
Orda believes it has achieved product market fit due to this massive expansion, supported by the growing referrals, high adoption rates and ease of onboarding new restaurants. It looks set to achieve more in the coming years.
