Samurai Incubate Africa Launches Second Fund For Startups

Japanese Venture Capital firm Samurai Incubate Africa has announced the launch of their second Africa focussed fund – Samurai Africa Fund 2nd General Partnership. The new fund of USD 18.250 Mn (JPY 2 Bn) will focus especially on startups based in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

The ticket size for investments, for this fund, will range between USD 50 K to 500 K for startups developing solutions for FinTech / insureTech, logistics, Medtech / healthcare, retail & e-commerce, agritech, transport & mobility, and entertainment sectors.

In a conversation with WeeTracker, Rena Yoneyama, Managing Partner, Samurai Incubate Africa said, “I’ve seen a huge potential of startups in Africa and would like to keep contributing to the growth of African startup ecosystem.”

The previous fund of Samurai Incubate Africa made 18 seed-stage investments under the name of Leapfrog Ventures in Africa during 2018 -2019. The USD 4.5 Mn fund actively rolled out equity money in startups based out of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria.

Through the second fund, Samurai Incubate would fund ventures at seed and Series A stage.

Recently, Samurai Incubate had partnered with Japanese air-conditioning giant, Daikin for a startup pitch event at Nairobi.

Disclaimer: Samurai Incubate is an investor in Wee Media, which also publishes WeeTracker