Chipper Cash, an African cross-border funds firm valued at $2.2 billion final yr, has laid off a portion of its workforce.
Yesterday, just a few affected and non-affected workers took to LinkedIn to disclose the information. TechCrunch has discovered from sources that over 50 workers have been affected throughout a number of departments; the engineering staff took the most important hit, with round 60% of these laid off coming from the division, in keeping with individuals acquainted with the matter.
“This morning a major quantity of Chipper employees have been let go in a layoff. Whereas I used to be not amongst them, lots of my shut colleagues and associates have been. If you happen to’re searching for gifted engineering management, engineers, technical program managers, analysts, or IT employees,” Erin Fusaro, the VP of Engineering at Chipper Money said in her LinkedIn put up.
Per LinkedIn, Chipper Money has about 400 workers so the layoffs affected 12.5% of its workforce. TechCrunch reached out to Chipper Money for remark.
Final November, the African cross-border funds firm raised $150 million in a Sequence C extension spherical led by Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-defunct cryptocurrency alternate platform FTX. The funding got here barely six months after Chipper Money closed its first Series C round of $100 million, led by SVB Capital, the company enterprise capital arm of SVB Monetary Group. Since its inception, Chipper Money has raised over $305 million from buyers together with Deciens Capital, Ribbit Capital and Bezos Expeditions.
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CEO Ham Serunjogi based Chipper Money with Maijid Moujaled in 2018 to supply a no-fee peer-to-peer cross-border fee service in Africa through its app. Its providers are used throughout seven African international locations — Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa and Kenya. The corporate started making strides outdoors the continent final yr. It expanded to the U.Ok. — permitting individuals to ship cash from the European nation to Chipper Money’s African markets — and the U.S. — to facilitate peer-to-peer cash motion from the U.S. to Nigeria and Uganda. Chipper Money says it has 5 million customers throughout these markets.
Layoffs have develop into the norm as rising rates of interest and an prolonged bull run that swept throughout personal and public markets during the last couple of years, amongst different components, mix to make life tough for tech corporations. Amidst recession fears, buyers are being stringent with their cash, primarily towards growth- and late-stage startups. Because of this, startups have needed to lower prices and trim down workforces to outlive; those that have had some success elevating capital have needed to modify to pre-pandemic valuations.
Financial headwinds have hit the worldwide fintech house arduous. Firms reminiscent of Stripe and Klarna have needed to lay off workers and on the time similar time, prune their valuations. Whereas there have been whispers of African unicorns slashing valuations internally, solely half of this development has publicly manifested itself to this point inside this choose group. This June, Wave, an African unicorn that provides cellular cash providers in a part of Francophone Africa, laid off about 15% of its workforce. Chipper Money has joined the fray with this information. SWVL, 54gene, Sendy and Twiga are examples of mid-to-large-sized corporations on the continent which have additionally trimmed their workforce.
