We recorded six funding deals in the African startup ecosystem last week one of which was the most impressive deal recorded in Africa in months. It featured Moove, a mobility fintech company raising $100 million in its series B funding round. Elsewhere, Float also raised a remarkable $11 million while Zone and mTek raised $8.5 million and $1.25 million respectively.
Funding
Float
Funding round: $11 Million
Investors: Standard Bank Corporate and Investment Banking
Founded: 2020, South Africa
Founders: Alex Forsyth Thompson
Products: Float operates a payment method that encourages smarter credit card usage among shoppers. The startup’s digital infrastructure lets shoppers make a purchase once and split their payments over up to 24 interest-free, fee-free monthly installments.
What Next?: Fueled by the funding the company is set to roll out its card-linked installment platform, which will support its accelerated growth plans over the next four years.
Pharmacy Marts
Funding round: Bridge Round
Investors: Acasia Ventures
Founded: 2021, Egypt
Founders: Ahmed Kadous, Haitham El Ghotni, Mahmoud Shousha
Products: Pharmacy Marts operates a B2B digital health marketplace that connects pharmacies and medical suppliers to easily access and receive medicine, medical supplies and cosmetics. Suppliers get to list their products in a single location on the company’s platform, and pharmacies get ample opportunity to connect and purchase inventory.
What Next?: The funding will help propel Pharmacy Marts on its mission to expand into further verticals to enhance business support initiatives and build a highly efficient pharmaceutical supply chain across the country.
ClusterLab
Funding round: Pre-Seed ($600k)
Investors: Karim Beguir,
Founded: 2020, Tunisia
Founders: Haithem Kchaou and Chehir Dhaouadi,
Products: ClusterLab provides AI and natural language processing (NLP) technologies to democratize education and knowledge sharing. The companies’ products include Reedz, an Arabic audiobook summarization app, and Elm, an AI-powered learning platform.
What Next?: With the funding infusion, Clusterlabs is set to bolster its research and development efforts, with a particular focus on advancing its next-generation large language models (LLMs). These advanced language models will further enhance Clusterlab’s NLP capabilities, helping them to refine user experiences within their AI-powered products like Reedz and Elm.
Moove
Funding round: Series B ($100Million)
Investors: Uber, Mubadala Investment Company, The Latest Ventures, AfricInvest, Palm Drive Capital, Triatlum Advisors, and Future Africa
Founded: 2019, Nigeria
Founders: Ladi Delano, Jide Odunsi
Products: Moove is a mobility fintech company. The company provides alternative credit-scoring technology which it embeds in ride-hailing and e-logistics platforms, giving mobility entrepreneurs access to proprietary performance and revenue analytics to underwrite loans.
What Next?: The company plans to use the new capital to expand its revenue-based vehicle financing platform to 16 new markets by the end of 2025.
Zone
Funding round: Seed ($8.5 Million)
Investors: Flourish Ventures, TLcom Capital, Digital Currency Group (DCG), Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures (VKAV), Alter Global, and Endeavor Catalyst.
Founded: 2022, Nigeria
Founders: Wale Onawunmi, Obi Emetarom
Products: formerly Appzone, is a payment infrastructure that uses blockchain technology to provide banking as a service to African organizations. They operate a layer-one blockchain network that digitizes fiat payments and enables the transition to digital currencies while connecting previously excluded financial institutions into an all-inclusive payment ecosystem.
What Next?: The funds raised will be used to scale the company’s blockchain-based decentralized payment infrastructure for financial services providers across the continent and beyond. The company will also expand the coverage of its network domestically and connect more banks and financial services companies.
mTek
Funding round: $1.25 Million
Investors: Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures, Founders Factory Africa.
Founded: 2019, Kenya
Founders: Chris Osore, Bente Krogmann
Products: The company offers a seamless and convenient avenue to access insurance products through its innovative platform connecting the overall insurance ecosystem,
What Next?: The funding will support the firm’s rapid growth to increase its presence in the East African insurance market while solidifying its position as a leader in insurance innovation.
Opportunities
The Village Capital Greentech investment-readiness accelerator
Call For Applications: Villgro Africa Women-Led Healthcare Startups in Africa
