Tech in Africa
Ventures Platform announced the first close of a $40 million pan-African investment fund led by the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) alongside participation from existing and new players. A second close will take place in early 2022 and feature select investments from global Institutional Investors and DFIs.
The fund – founded by Kola Aina a prolific early-stage investor – initially operated on an accelerator model where they gave out $20,000 cheques to startups in their pre-seed and seed stages in exchange for 10% equity, building an impressive track record.
Since it began taking outside capital in 2017, it has invested in lead startups such as Piggyvest, Paystack, Kudi, and others. Last year, PayStack was one of the local startups that cashed out in Paystack’s $200 million acquisition by Stripe including several other secondary exits. Most of the fund’s LPs are African or based in Africa.
Ventures Platform runs a thesis-centered fund fixated on market-creative innovations solving non-consumption while creating innovative ways to deliver goods and services to low-income markets. The firm is primarily fixated on the sectors of fintech, healthtech, agritech, enterprise SaaS and digital infrastructure.
Ventures Platform is mainly fixated on pre-seed to seed-stage companies while offering an average cheque size of $50,000. The new fund gives Ventures platform the ability to participate in Serie A deals over $1 million – including follow-on rounds. Based in Abuja, the company now has investment companies in Kenya, Zambia, and Egypt.
Source: TechCrunch
