Meet the founder who raised $13 million to fix one of African business's biggest money problems
Yele Oyekola built Duplo to solve a critical issue for African companies: the hidden complexity of financial operations. While many fintech firms focus on basic money movement, Oyekola identified that businesses struggle significantly with what happens after a payment. Managing invoices, supplier approvals, and account reconciliation often involves manual, fragmented systems that result in significant financial leakage. In Nigeria alone, experts estimate that inefficient manual invoicing leads to massive annual tax losses and billions in missed payments due to errors and disputes.
Oyekola developed Duplo to provide a centralized platform that automates these repetitive finance tasks. The company has secured $13 million in funding to scale this mission. By creating a system that handles complex approval workflows and multi-bank reporting, Duplo allows mid-sized and enterprise firms to gain clear visibility into their cash flow. This shift away from spreadsheets and manual tracking is designed to help businesses move from simple record-keeping to a more automated financial structure.
The path to building Duplo was not immediate. After early experience in finance and public policy at the United Nations, Oyekola gained a broad perspective on the operational constraints faced by businesses across the continent. A previous startup attempt in Kenya provided him with lessons in product development and market execution. These experiences shaped his understanding that building for business clients requires a different approach than building for consumer apps. Businesses prioritize reliability, security, and trust because they are handling salaries, taxes, and supplier payments.
Today, Duplo is expanding its reach from Nigeria into South Africa. Oyekola views this expansion as part of a larger goal to provide a standard financial operating system for the continent. He believes the next phase of the platform involves integrating intelligence to handle invoice processing and error detection automatically. By removing the manual burden from finance teams, he aims to allow companies to focus on strategic growth rather than administrative tasks. The goal is to provide a single, consistent infrastructure that makes business operations more efficient regardless of the specific country or regulatory environment.