Frain Technologies raises $473,000 pre-seed funding round.
Subomi Oluwalana, co-founder and CEO of the Nigerian developer-tooling business, launched it in February 2021 after quitting his job as a backend developer at Nigerian fintech Tangerine Life.
For several months, the team tried to offer APIs to businesses with co-founder and COO Emmanuel Aina, but with little success.
While refining their solution to make it more economically feasible, the team discovered that webhooks were a common issue among startups looking to establish APIs.
Webhooks are simply the glue that holds APIs together. They are a crucial infrastructure component for most API firms (like Stripe, Twillo, or Paystack).
In essence, a failed webhooks event has a direct impact on customers, hence Frain created Convoy, a cloud-native webhook service that allows developers to transmit webhook events to their users in minutes.
Engineers had to create and maintain this infrastructure component in-house prior to the creation of Convoy when developing APIs.
The service has been well accepted since its inception, with a number of companies, including Buycoins, Termii, GetWallets, and Dojah, adopting it in production.
Rally Cap Ventures led the $473,000 pre-seed funding round. Musha Ventures, Future Africa, Eric Idiah, Tomiwa Lasebikan, Prosper Otemuyiwa, Odunayo Eweniyi, Timi Ajiboye, Opeyemi Awoyemi, and several other angels are among the investors.
Frain Technologies will use the funds to bring Convoy to maturity both locally and globally, as well as develop additional products.
“We are ecstatic to have gained these investors’ support and endorsement, and we plan to increase and expand our product offerings in the next months, as well as the number of clients we serve.”
We feel Frain Technologies is in an exciting period. We’re big fans of open-source and developer tools, and we’re supporting a new wave of global dev tool entrepreneurs.
“Out of Lagos, Nigeria, we’re constructing the next HashiCorp, GitLab, and GitHub,” Oluwalana added.
Rally Cap Ventures CEO Hayden Simmons said his business invests in key infrastructural API firms that help fintech solutions scale across emerging economies.
“It was evident from the moment I met Subomi and Emmanuel that they are deeply dedicated experts working in an important field.”
“It was evident after sharing with our portfolio companies that their product is in high demand not only within Africa, but also globally,” he said.
