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 A Technology News Room 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 Africas big-three tech hubs Nigeria,Kenya and South Africa but is also eyeing rising markets, such as Ethiopia.TLcoms current Africa portfolio includes Nigerian trucking logistics venture Kobo360, KenyasTwiga 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 funds partners and share a value proposition.
If its something we find vaguely interesting, well make a decision, he said.One $50 million round wasnt enough for South Africas Jumo, so the fintech firm raised another $55 million in February, backed by Goldman Sachs, which led the Cape Town based companys $52 million round back in 2018.This fresh investment comes from new and existinginvestors includingGoldman Sachs,Odey Asset Management and LeapFrog Investments, Jumo said in a statement though Goldman told A Technology News Room its participation in this weeks round isnt 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 companys 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 Discovers global network.Amazon Web Serviceshas entered a partnership withSafaricom Kenyas largest telco, ISP and mobile payment provider in a collaboration that could spell competition between American cloud providers in Africa.In a statement to A Technology News Room,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 Africas most prominent digital companies.Safaricom, led primarily by its M-Pesa mobile money product, holds remarkable dominance in Kenya, Africas sixth largest economy.
M-Pesa has 20.5 million customers across a network of 176,000 agents and generates around one-fourth of Safaricoms $2.2 billion annual revenues (2018).M-Pesa has 80% of Kenyas mobile money agent network, 82% of the countrys active mobile-money subscribers and transfers 80% of Kenyas mobile-money transactions, per the latest sector statistics.A number of Safaricoms 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 Microsofts AWS competitor product Azure and offer cloud services to the continents startups and established businesses.More Africa-related stories @ A Technology News RoomAfrican tech around the net