H1 2018 Top Heavy- Holding Up Most Of The Funding Sky
This article is in continuation with our African Startup Funding Report for H1 2018. The 10 startups that garnered the highest amount of funding can be credited with USD 123 million, which is 74% of the total funding amount. Through this article, we intend to highlight these ten company who have held up a majority of the funding sky.
Cellulant is a digital payments solutions provider founded in 2004. With headquarters in Kenya, currently operates in 11 African countries and has struck partnerships with 94 banks and seven mobile money platforms. The platform offers a variety of mobile banking solutions, including remittances, mobile wallet transfers and financial services to vastly unbanked populations.
Branch is a microlending startup founded in 2015. Apart from the USD 20 million Venture money, the startup also raised USD 50 million in debt facility. The company claims of over 1 million app downloads in Sub-Saharan Africa.
It must be noted that although Branch is not headquartered in Africa, but the land remains its primary focus, with heavy operations in Lagos and Nairobi.
MKopa is a clean-tech startup founded in 2011 in Nairobi. The company works on “pay-as-you-go” model for energy services for off-grid customers in 5 countries. The off-grid solar energy provider claims to have connected 600,000 homes already. The USD 10 million round was led by Canada’s private equity CDC firm.
With this round, the Solar energy startup has USD 161.8 Mn under in its kitty.
Africa’s talking is an enterprise software startup. The company operates in 7 countries including Kenya where it is headquartered. The company works with over 20,0000 developers to create solution focused APIs across SMS, voice, payment, and airtime services.
The latest USD 8.6 million funding has come from World Bank’s IFC Venture Capital.
Swvl is transport tech startup launched in Cairo in early 2017 that enables riders heading in the same direction to share a ride in a van or bus. It operates hundreds of buses along 200 routes in Cairo and Alexandria.
This funding has been proclaimed as the largest ever funding round for a tech startup in Egypt. Swvl is previously funded by Careem, a ride-hailing biggie active in the region.
Nigeria based SureRemit raised USD 7 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) for its blockchain based remittances platform. The platform lets users buy digital vouchers which are redeemable for goods and services using RMT tokens. It also promises zero transaction fees on remittances, the ability to track the use of remittances sent and instant accessibility to shopping vouchers.
This is one of the largest amounts raised via ICO’s on the continent.
Founded in 2016, Lidya is a digital financial service platform focused on providing better access to credit for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Africa. It allows businesses to get loans ranging from USD 500 to USD 50 k, without the need to go to a physical location, provide collateral or present audited financials and projections.
It claims it has provided over 1500 loans to business operating in different domains.
Nairobi and London based farmer to farmer digital network, where farmers can ask questions in their language on anything related to agriculture. It uses machine learning and the power of the crowd to source the very best content and knowledge from a network of over 660,000 farmers, even via SMS.
It is currently operating in Kenya and Uganda.
Baharsoft is the company behind Cairo based recruitment platforms Wuzzuf and Forsana. In 9 years since its inception, the two platforms have garnered 2 million users as boasted by it. Both platforms offer Egyptians recruitment opportunities, servicing both ends of the spectrum with Wuzzaa’s primary clientele white collar employees and Forsana blue-collar job seekers.
Terragon Group is a data analytics firm founded in Lagos in 2009. They offer Digital Solutions for Business Transformation, Consumer Access, Data and Intelligence, Mobile Payments, Digital Content Management, and Technology to their clients. It has offices in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and South Africa.
