We recorded ten funding deals, one partnership, and the launch of one venture fund this week. Egyptian startups dominated the funding rounds, raising a total of $7.5M in three deals. Vendease, a Nigerian startup, raised the most money, $30M in Series A funding (a mix of $20M in equity and $10M in debt).
We also saw activity from Tunisia, Uganda, Ghana and Morocco.
Let’s get right into the details.
Funding
Deal of the Week
Vendease, a Nigerian food procurement startup, has raised $30M in Series A funding ($20M equity and $10M debt). Partech Africa and TLcom led the round, with participation from existing investors including VentureSouq, Hustle Fund, Hack VC, GFR Fund, Kube VC, Magic Fund, and Kairos Angels.
Founded in 2020, the startup offers food procurement and preservation services to its customers in Africa, which include restaurants and food businesses, hospitals, hotels, and schools. Vendease also provides its customers with financial services such as Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL).
The new funds will be used to expand and consolidate the company’s operations in eight cities across Nigeria and Ghana. They also intend to enter new markets and develop new products in order to improve customer efficiency.
In the words of the Investors
“Vendease is delivering vital solutions that impact critical issues around the food system in Africa. We are thrilled to be working with them to take these solutions to more restaurants and food businesses across the continent. We see huge scope for growth in Nigeria and beyond and we are very optimistic about what can be achieved.” – Cyril Collon, General Partner at Partech.
“Restaurants and food businesses play a vital role in communities across the continent and Vendease is on a mission to bring affordability, convenience, and reliability to these businesses and builds a platform that allows the wider food sector to optimise their operations. We look forward to working alongside the team as they pursue the next phase of growth and unlock significant value in Africa’s fragmented food supply chain.” – Andreata Muforo, Partner at TLcom.
In the words of the Founder
“Our mission is to enable the efficient flow of food across the continent, from point of production to point of consumption. It is more than just placing orders for supplies, we want to transform how the entire sector works and remove the bottlenecks that stunt the growth of restaurants and food businesses. With greater efficiency in the supply chain, we believe we can unlock more growth opportunities across board, which is why we are excited to have raised this round, led by two of Africa’s biggest VCs, who understand what it takes to power such an ambitious mission.” – Tunde Kara, CEO and co-founder of Vendease.
Grant
ComiBlock, a Nigerian investtech startup, has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Expert Dojo, a California-based growth accelerator.
Launched in February 2021, ComiBlock is a goal-based investing crypto robo-advisor that provides access to planning tools, advice, curated and thematic crypto-portfolios to anyone with a smartphone. This new funding will allow ComiBlock to expand its operations and invest in product development as it works to accelerate responsible cryptocurrency investing for people in emerging markets.
Pre-Seed
Partment, an Egypt-based proptech, has raised $1.5M in a pre-seed round led by Nclude, Plus Venture Capital, and a group of angel investors.
Founded in 2022 by Ahmed El Raggal and Nadim Nagui, Partment provides a smart booking system that allows users to co-own second homes, as well as an end-to-end property management service that optimizes property utilization. The new round will help Partment improve its platform infrastructure and launch its MVP in Egypt.
Mazaya, a B2B marketplace based in Egypt, has closed a $5 million pre-Seed round led by Raya Trade & Distribution.
Founded in 2021 by Amir Aboul Fotouh, Mazaya enables electronic goods retailers and merchants to obtain inventory for their stores from all major brands at competitive prices through the Mazaya App. Mazaya will be able to scale its operations in Egypt and expand into new markets, as well as potentially into other verticals, with the funds raised.
InGame Sports, a gaming platform based in Egypt, has raised over $1M in cash, in-kind resources, and grants in a pre-Seed round led by Openner, with participation from Sports Radar and other Egyptian and foreign angel investors.
Founded in 2021, Ingame is a football mobile game that introduces gameplay accompanied by a reward system to football fans. The funds raised will help the startup expand into new countries, launch add-ons based on Web3 technology infrastructure, and eventually incorporate blockchain technology across its modules.
Kumulus, a Tunisian startup that extracts drinking water directly from the air, has received $970,000 in pre-seed funding from Paris Techstars Accelerator, Flat6Labs, WILCO and Bpifrance, as well as some business angels.
The company develops thermal machines that can produce several liters of drinking water per day using only solar energy and humidity. The company intends to target markets with no reliable source of renewable drinking water or where water scarcity is a burden on the local community.
Pre-Series A
Numida, a Ugandan fintech, has raised $12.3M in pre-Series A funding ($7.3M in equity and $5M in debt). Serena Ventures led the equity round, which included Breega, 4Di Capital, Launch Africa, Soma Capital, Y Combinator, and existing investor MFS Africa. Lendable Asset Management provided $5 million in debt to complete the round.
Founded in 2017 by Mina Shahid, Catherine Denis, and Ben Best, the startup provides unsecured working capital loans to semi-formal African SMEs using its proprietary credit models and tech-enabled underwriting processes.
With the funds raised, the company intends to expand into Egypt, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Tanzania. Numida also aims to double Uganda’s user base to 40,000 businesses.
Farmerline, a Ghanaian agtech, has raised an additional $1.5M in pre-Series A funding from Oikocredit, a Dutch social impact investor.
Founded in 2013 by Alloysius Attah and Emmanuel Owusu Addai, the startup offers farm management tools to smallholder farmers and agribusinesses, such as field mapping, supply chain management, and remote tracking and identification of food sources. The team intends to expand their operations into Ivory Coast in the future.
Other deals
iiDENTIFii, a South African biometrics tech startup, has raised $15M in a growth capital round led by Arise, with participation from Sanari Capital and US tech entrepreneur Bill Spruill.
Founded in 2018 by Gur Geva, the company provides face authentication technology used for customer and employee authentication by African banks, insurance companies, and mining companies. The funds will be used to fund the company’s expansion across Africa.
SweepSouth, a South African home cleaning and services platform, has closed a $11M investment round led by Alitheia IDF, Africa’s first and largest gender-lens private equity fund. Endeavor Catalyst, Endeavor’s Harvest Fund II, Caruso Ventures, E4E Africa, and SweepSouth’s previous investors also participated in the round.
Founded in 2014 by Aisha Pandor and Alen Ribic, SweepSouth has a presence in four of Africa’s most important technology markets: South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Egypt. The investment will enable the startup to enter new markets and expand its current operations.
West Indian Ocean Cable Company, an African digital connectivity and infrastructure provider has received a $30M equity investment from IFC.
Across Africa, WIOCC provides connectivity services to cloud operators, content providers, broadband and mobile network operators, and internet service providers. It invests strategically in hyperscale terrestrial networks as well as subsea cables such as 2Africa, the West Africa Cable System, and Equiano.
The equity investment will help the company continue to build terrestrial fiber-optic networks, invest in new subsea cables, and launch open-access core and edge data center infrastructure.
Partnerships
Tabby, a UAE-based fintech, has collaborated with Egypt’s digital payment solution fintech Paymob to develop a buy now pay later (BNPL) solution for both in-store and online retailers.
Over 120,000 Paymob merchants will be able to use Tabby’s BNPL payment solution to increase their average order value, conversion rate, and overall performance.
Venture Fund
Morocco-based BMCE Capital Investment has launched a $4.5 million venture capital fund dedicated to seed-stage Moroccan startups.
The BMCE VC is also expected to connect its portfolio startups to a large network of Moroccan and international investors. To meet the target capital, the fund plans to raise money from renowned Moroccan investors and key players in the Moroccan economy in the coming months.
AU-Startups Highlights
🎉 The launch of all-women accelerator GrindstoneX celebrated
💵 Baobab invests $200k in 4 new African start-ups
🩺 i3 picks 30 African healthcare start-ups for a new $7m fund
⚙ $50m Knife Fund III to drive innovation in Africa
👩💻 Women in boots: Nigeria female founders share their bootstrapping experience
Jobs and Opportunities
Applications are now open for The Baobab Network’s first cohort for 2023. For more details, check here.
Start-ups with sustainable energy solutions in Ghana, Malawi, Morocco, and South Africa are invited to apply for funding of up to EUR 70,000. Applications open until 20th November 2022. Apply Here.
And that is all for this week’s funding review. Remember to share with your friends and colleagues if you received any value at all.
