Pariti, the community marketplace building infrastructure for entrepreneurship in Africa, has raised $2.85 million in seed funding led by Harlem Capital.
Other participating investors are Better Ventures, Accelerated Ventures, Diverse Angels, AVG Basecamp and New General Market Partners.
Founded in 2019 by Yacob Berhane and Wossen Ayele, Pariti empowers businesses with tools and expertise and provides expert freelancers with a platform to develop their careers. It helps businesses in underserved markets overcome the hurdles of accessing capital, hiring talent, and expanding beyond their borders by connecting them with handpicked experts on its platform that will not only advise but do the work to achieve their goals.
Pariti has over 880 companies across 42 countries on its platform, up from 500 early this year. The firm will use the seed funding to build SaaS workflows to aggregate multiple forms of raising capital, from traditional equity and debt to DeFi solutions. The company also plans to enhance its talent marketplace, create a bespoke solution for investors looking to invest and support founders, hire talent, build bigger communities and expand into new markets.
Co-founder and CEO, Yacob Berhane said: “We’re thrilled to be working with Harlem CapitalTheir focus on data, process, and supporting underserved ecosystems aligns perfectly with our mission and makes them an amazing partner for us to build with.”
Berhane adds: “The pandemic was a Black Swan event because we saw a major jump inactivity on our platform. Remote staffing and remote investing accelerated tremendously. This was a bet we made a while back but obviously could not anticipate what was coming.
“And after taking nearly ten years to get Africa’s first unicorn, we had six announced in roughly six months. This led to a significant increase of interest from local and international investors for African startups.”
