Future Africa has says that it has invested $3million in 13 startups, bringing our total number of investments as a fund to 47. The figure is 2X what Future Africa deployed in 2020. The Africa-focused venture capital firm revealed this in a recent statement.
It added that more pan-African investments were made in startups across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa.
Also, Future Africa disclosed that it is upping its funding of women-led startups and so far, it has surpassed its $1million commitment to them.
Here are the startups that have received funding from Future Africa in 2021:
- Termii
We co-led Termii’s $1.4M seed round with Kepple Africa Ventures. Termii is a fast-growing startup out of Lagos that helps African businesses send, analyse and optimise digital communications across e-mail, SMS, voice, and WhatsApp.
- Lami
We participated in Lami’s $1.8m seed round. Led by Jihan Abass, Lami is helping African insurers use artificial intelligence to provide better services to the insured and expand faster to the uninsured.
Ongair is a customer service platform for businesses. It allows companies to interact with their customers via major messaging apps like WeChat, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram.
We participated in Stitch’s $4m seed round. Coming out of stealth, Stitch is building APIs to enable fintechs to connect to their customers’ accounts across Africa.
Others (These startups were not named because they are yet to officially announced their funding)
- A startup connecting Africans to the global economy with cryptocurrency. We’re impressed not just by its founding team but its ability to develop products despite challenges in this market.
- A pharmaceutical startup that uses Artificial Intelligence to solve the drug counterfeiting problem in Africa.
- A startup building programmable cards. Its API helps businesses create flexible virtual and physical cards for multiple purposes.
- A startup in the retail space, providing credit-backed goods for retailers in Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania and Nigeria.
- A digital bank enabling transactions for financial organisations operating in the UK-Africa corridor. This bank will first solve for the UK-Africa corridor and expand into the rest of Europe.
- A startup helping African distributors manage inventory and sales. It’s growing fast and now supports distributors on its platform, with almost 400 merchants.
- A startup helping FMCGs and similar organisations optimise sales and distribution. Its clients include large telecom operators and the biggest manufacturers in Africa.
- A digital bank for African immigrants. It facilitates remittances and other payments between the diaspora and home.
- A digital learning and school management platform for African students. This platform is now active in 3 countries and used by over 700 schools.
