Oui Capital, an Africa-focused VC firm has completed the first closing of its $30 million second fund, Oui Capital Mentors Fund II.
Founded in 2019 by Olu Oyinsan and Francesco Andreoli, Oui Capital is an Early Stage Venture Capital For The African Continent. It was formed out of the imbalance that exists between high-growth technology startups in sub-Saharan Africa and the smart capital available to take advantage of these opportunities.
The same year it was founded, the venture capital firm launched its debut fund at $5 million. Since then, Oui Capital has made 18 investments in technology sectors spanning different industries such as fintech, logistics & mobility, e-commerce, healthcare, and enterprise software. Some names include TeamApt, MVX, Akiba Digital, Duplo, Ndovu, Maad, Intelligra, Aifluence, and Pharmacy Marts.
The $30 million fund, just like the first, will back sub-Saharan startups in the pre-seed and seed stages. So far, the firm has reached its first close at a little over $11 million and expects to complete the final close by Q4 2022.
Managing partner Oyinsan, said Oui Capital’s first fund delivered early solid returns, with a MOIC (multiple on invested capital) in excess of 7 times. He said that one of the reasons why the firm managed to accomplish this lies in the “sparks” that determine which startup to invest in or not: team, market, knowledge of the customer and tech, and customer enthusiasm.
With respect to follow-on capital, the managing partner said Oui Capital makes such investments proactively as part of the firm’s ongoing portfolio monitoring. As it stands, Oui Capital has made follow-on investments in about 20% of its portfolio companies.
“We go the extra mile with founders whom we partner with and this is why we maintain a relatively smaller portfolio compared to many seed funds. However, there is a critical distinction between the responsibilities of a VC as an investor and as a fund manager,” said the managing partner.
“Being an investor begets the type of die-hard optimism and support as earlier described. Being an effective fund manager also puts the fiduciary responsibility on you to know when to stop devoting scarce resources to problems that might prove too difficult to fix and dedicate these resources to higher-performing companies in your portfolio to minimize losses and maximize investor value.”
From this new fund, Oui Capital intends to write initial checks of up to $750,000 (a 10x increase from the ticket size of its first fund) with reserves in place for such follow-on investments. “Expect us to be leading many more deals across the ecosystem and vocalizing firm initiatives — all things that we’ve been doing quietly in the past four years, but now looking to double down on these with the new fund,” Oyinsan added.
Oui Capital’s second fund welcomed a mix of individual and VC investors as limited partners. Individual investors such as Brad Feld, Seth Levine, Ryan McIntyre (Foundry Group’s partners), Gbenga Oyebode, Alitheia Capital’s Tokunboh Ismael, Idris Alubankudi, and TeamApt CEO Tosin Eniolorunda participated. The global VCs involved in this second fund include Angur Nagpal’s Vibe Capital, D Global ventures, Boston-based One Way Ventures, and Ground Squirrel Ventures.
As a result, the African countries where Oui Capital has made at least one investment include Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, Egypt, and South Africa. The firm plans to make more investments in North Africa and Francophone Africa, regions that witnessed increasing startup and venture capital activity last year when African tech funding hit record highs in correlation with global numbers.
“Our pan-African strategy has made us a fund of choice for global LPs looking for exposure to the broader Africa opportunity without having to get into the weeds of understanding different regions separately,” stated Oyinsan.
