By Adedapo Adesanya
Flutterwave, Africa’s largest startup, is pressing ahead with plans for an initial public offering (IPO) despite controversies about the unicorn and its co-founder, Mr Olugbenga Agboola.
According to the firm’s CEO, who came under intense scrutiny following a series of allegations and his denial of his involvement in such, the company is forging ahead with its planned listings because it is very crucial to realise its targets.
Mr Agboola, in an interview with Bloomberg, said going public has become necessary for the company to attract large global clients.
According to the publication, Mr Agboola brushed aside accusations that it had refused to honour former employees’ stock rights and that staff were harassed and bullied.
According to him, these were “very, very isolated” cases, and they wouldn’t affect the planned share sale.
“There’s some kind of customers we’ll attract when we are public. The large global clients need you to have the same level of compliance and level of global view that they have,” Mr Agboola was quoted in the interview.
He added that the company, which was recently embroiled in controversies in Kenya, has won approval for the first step in securing the right to operate in the country.
Business Post understands that a time for the IPO was not announced by the Flutterwave CEO as the current market environment was not “great right now.”
The company had previously mulled a double listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited.
Mr Agboola was the face of public scrutiny in 2022 when he faced allegations bothering on harassment and bullying. The company also took a hit in July last year, when the Kenyan High Court froze Flutterwave’s bank accounts under anti-money laundering rules, and the country’s central bank said it wasn’t licensed to operate payments services in the country.
Despite these, Flutterwave said that its payment processing business through its payments app, SendApp, increased 23-fold in the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2022.
Payments through point-of-sale devices rose more than fivefold, and revenue in its small and medium business units jumped almost fourfold.
Mr Agboola sees the company growing its presence in the markets it is currently in and possibly seeking acquisitions to further its reach.
“The goal is to make merchants across Africa, consumers across Africa use us more and know that we are the most reliable platform to use,” he said. “Africa is huge; the potential is huge,” he said.
Since its founding in 2016, Flutterwave has rapidly expanded and now has a presence in about 30 African countries. The company’s valuation is at $3 billion.
