Grace Ashiru
Flourish Ventures, a global venture capital firm that invests in fintech entrepreneurs with a social mission, has started Madica, a structured investment program for early-stage tech companies in Africa.
To help mission-driven and under-represented founders, the new sector-agnostic program will invest money in tech start-ups and provide founders with personalized mentoring and world-class help building their businesses.
Madica hopes to support 25-30 African entrepreneurs with up to $200,000 each over the next three years, along with multi-year programmatic support.
The new investment program aims to help early-stage founders in Africa deal with systemic problems like a lack of access to capital, industry networks, mentorship, and structured training.
A carefully selected group of seasoned African business owners and executives who will act as mentors to Madica founders will be an essential component of the program. Based on the conviction that robust mentoring programs are an essential component of the most dynamic start-up ecosystems, Madica will offer the mentor community rewards that are directly proportional to the level of success achieved by the companies they advise.
Madica intends to share a portion of its financial returns with the broader ecosystem to strengthen this sense of community. Madica hopes to promote a more vibrant and equitable funding environment on the continent by pioneering some of these unique features in an investment program.
Madica, which stands for “Made in Africa,” is an African initiative. It invites founders from all over the continent, including Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and South Africa, which are big tech hubs. Also, to fill in funding gaps on the continent, Madica will prioritize companies with local founders and women and focus on frontier sectors.
For example, CEOs who went to school in Africa raised 44% fewer deals and 28% less money than those who went outside of Africa. Start-ups with a female CEO do much worse than those with a male CEO. In fact, 93% of the 2021 funding in Africa went to start-ups with male CEOs.
Even though investment is booming on the continent, “most of the money goes to a small number of well-connected entrepreneurs and the more well-known tech hubs,” said Emmanuel Adegboye, who is in charge of Madica.
Madica, unlike other programs, is sector-agnostic and plans to increase its focus on providing hands-on support, extensive resources, network access, and other benefits. As a result, in addition to the $6 million in investment capital, we have set aside an equal amount for programmatic support.
We encourage founders from all over the world to apply for our program. We believe that Africans have an unrivalled entrepreneurial spirit, and one of Madica’s primary goals is to ensure that every African founder has a level playing field.
Eligibility
Mission-driven start-ups must have a minimum viable product (MVP), have founders who work full-time, and have received little or no institutional funding to be eligible for the program.
Ameya Upadhyay, a Venture Partner at Flourish Ventures, said, “Madica is an investment in the African venture ecosystem, with the audacious goal of making a larger systemic shift.
Through Madica, we want to build a group of mentors, make world-class programming, get follow-on capital from the crowd, and use Flourish’s global reach to make local networks more effective. In the long run, these will help other parts of the ecosystem, such as start-ups, investors, and policymakers.
Upadhyay said, “We hope that Madica can help change the story about African start-ups by making them seem less risky, bringing in more money, giving more founders ideas, and getting more media attention.”.”
The application process for Madica is open, so founders don’t need to know anyone to apply. Partners like incubators, accelerators, and angel investors will help the program find and assist entrepreneurs.
How to apply
All applicants will go through the same evaluation process, and investments will be made throughout the year on a rolling basis. Now that applications are open, interested start-ups can visit Madica’s website to learn more and fill out an application.
