INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
VC firm TLcom Capital closed its Tide Africa Fund at $71 million in February, and announced plans to invest in 12 startups over the next 18
months.
The group — with offices in London, Lagos and Nairobi — is looking for tech-enabled, revenue-driven ventures in Africa from
seed-stage to Series B, according to TLcom Managing PartnerMaurizio Caio.
He told TechCrunch the fund was somewhat agnostic on startup
sectors, but was leaning toward infrastructure logistics ventures versus consumer finance companies.
On geographic scope, TLcom Capital will
focus primarily on startups in Africa big-three tech hubs — Nigeria,Kenya and South Africa — but is also eyeing rising markets, such as
Ethiopia.
TLcom current Africa portfolio includes Nigerian trucking logistics venture Kobo360, Kenya&sTwiga Foods (a B2B food supply-chain
company) and tech-talent accelerator Andela.
Both of these companies have gone on to expand in Africa and receive subsequent investment by
United States investment bank,Goldman Sachs.
For those startups that wish to pitch to TLcom Capital, Caio encouraged founders to contact
one of the fund partners and share a value proposition
&If it something we find vaguely interesting, we&ll make a decision,& he said.
TLcom Capital closes $71M Africa fund with plans to back 12
startups
One $50 million round wasn''t enough for South Africa Jumo, so the fintech firm raised another — $55 million — in February,
backed by Goldman Sachs, which led the Cape Town based company $52 million round back in 2018.
This fresh investment comes from new and
existing…investors includingGoldman Sachs,Odey Asset Management and LeapFrog Investments,& Jumo said in a statement — though Goldman
told TechCrunch its participation in this week round isn''t confirmed.
After the latest haul, Jumo has raised $146 million in capital,
according toCrunchbase.
Founded in 2015, the venture offers a full tech stack for partners to build savings, lending and insurance products
for customers in emerging markets.
Jumo is active in six markets and plans to expand to two new countries in Africa (Nigeria and Ivory
Coast) and two in Asia (Bangladesh and India).
The company products have disbursed more than $1 billion in loans and served over 15 million
people and small businesses, according to Jumo data.
Jumo joins a growing list of African digital-finance startups raising big money from
outside investors and expanding abroad
A $200 million investment by Visa in 2019 catapulted Nigerian payments firmInterswitchto unicorn status, the same year the company launched
its Verge card product on Discover global network.
South African fintech startup Jumo raises second $50M+ VC round
Amazon Web Serviceshas
entered a partnership withSafaricom— Kenya largest telco, ISP and mobile payment provider — in a collaboration that could spell
competition between American cloud providers in Africa.
In a statement toTechCrunch,the East African company framed the arrangement as a
&strategic agreement& wherebySafaricomwill sell AWS services (primarily cloud) to its East Africa customer network.
Safaricom — whose
products include thefamedM-Pesamobile money product — will also become the first Advanced Consulting Partner for the AWS partner network
in East Africa.
Partnering with Safaricom plugs AWS into the network of one of East Africa most prominent digital companies.
Safaricom, led
primarily by its M-Pesa mobile money product, holds remarkable dominance in Kenya, Africa sixth largest economy
M-Pesa has 20.5 million customers across a network of 176,000 agents and generates around one-fourth of Safaricom ≈ $2.2 billion annual
revenues (2018).
M-Pesa has 80% of Kenya mobile money agent network, 82% of the country active mobile-money subscribers and transfers 80%
of Kenya mobile-money transactions, per the latest sector statistics.
A number of Safaricom clients (including those it provides payments
and internet services to) are companies, SMEs and startups.
The Safaricom-AWS partnership points to an emerging competition between American
cloud service providers to scale in Africa by leveraging networks of local partners.
The most obvious rival to the AWS-Safaricom strategic
agreement is theMicrosoft-Liquid Telecom collaboration
Since 2017, Microsoft has partnered with the Southern African digital infrastructure company to grow Microsoft AWS competitor product —
Azure — and offer cloud services to the continent startups and established businesses.
More Africa-related stories @TechCrunch
These
specialized Africa VC funds are welcoming co-investors
After VCs spend millions Nigeria restricts ride-hail motorbike taxis
Africa e-tailer
Jumia reports first full-year results post NYSE IPO
Sokowatch raises $14M to digitize Africa informal B2B supply-chain
African crowdsolving
startup Zindi scales 10,000 data scientists
African tech around the ‘net
Ethiopian ed-tech company Gebeya raises $2m funding
round
Nigerian crypto platform Bitfxt lands $15m from UK investors, Payitup parent company
