The startup raised a $620,000 pre-seed last year from some of its existing investors. The one-year-old company plans to raise debt capital by January to complement this process, Okonkwo said. Formerly Sabi Cash, Pastel was founded by Abuzar Royesh, Olamide Oladeji and Izunna Okonkwo, Stanford graduate students who, according to co-founder and chief growth officer (CGO) Okonkwo, in an interview with TechCrunch, shared similar interests in building solutions for micro and SMBs in emerging markets, particularly from their countries of origin: Afghanistan (Royesh) and Nigeria (Oladeji and Okonkwo).The company’s flagship product, Sabi (not to be confused with a B2B e-commerce marketplace with the same name), is a digital bookkeeping app that allows small businesses to monitor and manage their transactions and customers, get insights into their cashflows, issue receipts, and effectively manage customers who owe them. Pastel only started making revenue recently and does so by charging interest and a small fee on these loans; it also has access to savings to use as a float for loan financing. But the plan is by January, once we’ve expanded much faster, we’ll raise debt or partner with an existing debt player, and then become the origination tool.”The U.S.-headquartered and Lagos-based Pastel isn’t the only startup operating in this line of business.