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The gestation period to profitability in a typical Nigerian startup is long. That long gestation is also the reason why many startups or small businesses collapse after a few years of founding. Typically, one way to deal with this is to raise capital, ramp up market entry to grow fast enough to attain profitability. But in our extremely volatile economy, if the timing is off by weeks or months, the company can collapse. You just run out of cash.

Yes, your new problem in Nigeria is not just capital but the long gestation period required for profitability, affected by many factors at scale.

Those factors include the fact that every business is a local government since you provide your light (generator), water (borehole), security (guards), etc. It is based on this that I tell founders – Do Not Blitzscale in Nigeria because if one core metric misaligns, you will struggle.

Blitzscaling within a stochastic system is an illusion and pure guesswork since the leverages cannot be put in order. Yes, the greatest entrepreneurs in Nigeria stay the course, go “slow”, and manage the state of our entropy. They look boring but there is a reason for that: you survive if you can find how to make profit rather than trying to go for dominance only to be tripped into oblivion.

Sure, this is not to say that you must not grow. I am saying that I want that growth to come from the BEST INVESTORS. And the best investors are CUSTOMERS. Until you can get them to invest in your business at scale, your mission has not been validated. As the world goes through a tough economic phase, find a path to profitability and that means making customers to invest in you by buying and patronizing your products and services!

Of course, there is a big lesson: do not begin scaling until you can retain customers. That retention is largely a validation that you have a product-market fit.

MFS Africa has announced that it has secured an additional $100 million in its series C extension to $200 million. The equity and debt funding was led by African investment manager Admaius Capital Partners while existing investors like AfricInvest FIVE and CommerzVentures participated.

New investors who participated in the new round are: Vitruvian Partners and AXA Investment Managers. Debt financing came from Stanbic IBTC Bank, a Lagos-based bank, and Symbiotic.

Dare Okoudjou, founder and CEO of MFS Africa, said the new funding will further accelerate MFS Africa’s expansion plans across Africa, and boost its integration into the global digital payment ecosystem, its expansion into Asia through its joint venture with LUN Partners to enable cross-border digital payments between Africa and China, and its ambitious growth plans for the BAXI network, a startup it acquired last year.

“With this US$100 million extension of our Series C fundraise we are thrilled to have the support of world-class investors Admaius, Vitruvian and AXA IM Alts, and for the continued support of existing investors, on our journey to making borders matter less when it comes to payments.

“The strength of our business model is grounded on building a lasting digital infrastructure that unleashes and simplifies economic activities across the continent through any-to-any interoperability. Our multiple initiatives and solutions are providing access to Africans, at home and in the diaspora. We are building MFS Africa into a safe, sound, scalable and high impact pan-African payment infrastructure that will facilitate Africa’s rapidly growing commerce, both now and in the future,” he said.

TechCrunch reported that Okoudjou had made similar plans last November when the company announced its first $100 million tranche. But then, the Baxi acquisition was still pending approval from the Central Bank of Nigeria.

But the past six months have come with a significant change – BAXI now possesses two licenses to operate in Nigeria following the regulator’s approvals.  The Payment Service Solution Provider (PSSP), which allows BAXI to build gateways that process payments for third-party merchants, and Payment Terminal Service Provider (PTSP) license, empowers BAXI to deploy its point-of-sale terminals for agency banking.

MFS Africa has been bold in its acquisition playbook for a startup. TechCrunch mentioned its purchase of U.S.-based Global Technology Partners (GTP) in a cash-and-shares deal worth $34 million. With its rapidly expanding business base that connects over 320 million mobile money wallets across 35+ African countries and 700 corridors, the Africa-focused and London-based company sees an untapped market of millions of Africans who can’t use their mobile money accounts to pay for subscription-based services run by international companies such as Netflix and Amazon. This is due to cross-border payment bottlenecks.

The acquisition of GTP, which integrates prepaid cards with a single bank account and incorporates them into its mobile payment platforms, gives MFS Africa an avenue to issue prepaid cards to its customers so they can perform these tasks — and also serve the African diaspora market in the U.S.

“The strength of our business model is grounded on building a lasting digital infrastructure that unleashes and simplifies economic activities across the continent through any-to-any interoperability,” Okoudjou said in a statement. “Our multiple initiatives and solutions are providing access to Africans, at home and in the diaspora. We are building MFS Africa into a safe, sound, scalable and high-impact pan-African payment infrastructure that will facilitate Africa’s rapidly growing commerce, both now and in the future.”