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Less than 3% of genetic material used in global pharmaceutical research is from Africa. The staggering gap is quite surprising because Africans and people of African descent are reported to be more genetically diverse than any other population.
Since launching in 2019, African genomics startup 54gene has been at the forefront of bridging this divide in the global genomics market. Today, the company has secured $25 million in Series B funding to bolster its efforts.
This round comes a year after the company, founded by Dr Abasi Ene-Obong, raised $15 million in Series A and two years after closing a $4.5 million seed round.
In total, 54gene has raised more than $45 million since its inception.
With the world&#8217;s analyzed genomes coming mostly from anywhere that isn&#8217;t Africa, the continent remains a valuable source of new genetic information for health and drug discovery research.
This is where 54gene&#8217;s work is relevant. The company conducts and leverages this research to ensure Africans are recipients of upcoming drug and medical discoveries.
Last year when we covered the company last year, CEO Ene-Obong disclosed that for 54gene to conduct this research, it recruits voluntary participants who donate genetic samples via swab or blood tests.
It still very much works this way. However, instead of depending on third-party health centres like hospitals and sending the samples abroad for analysis, 54gene <a href="https://www.illumina.com/company/news-center/feature-articles/54gene-Uses-Illumina-Sequencing-to-Create-World-Class-Facility.html" target="_blank">launched its own genetics sequencing and microarray lab</a> in Lagos last September. The company did this in partnership with U.S.-based biotech company Illumina.
Speaking with TechCrunch, Ene-Obong says in addition to the genotyping capabilities offered, the lab also provides whole-genome sequencing (WGS) and whole-exome sequencing (WES).
Not to bore you with the jargon but here&#8217;s why this is important. Genotyping tends to show only 0.02% of an individual&#8217;s DNA; however, WGS can show almost 100% of the same person&#8217;s DNA.
For WES, although it represents only 1.5% of the human genome, it shows approximately 85% of known disease-related variants.
With these three in place, the company can advance genomics research and expand its ability to help scientists and researchers in Africa.
Unlike fintech and other fast-moving sectors like e-commerce, innovation in healthtech takes some time to take shape finally. 54gene is one of the few startups in the sector and even in Africa to have moved from seed stage to Series B in under two years.
It&#8217;s this sort of frightening speed that makes one wonder what the company is doing right. So I ask the CEO whether the company is indeed seeing significant progress in advancing African genomics; he answers in the affirmative.
&#8220;Though the arc of conducting early research through drug approval can be long in biotech, we have taken the approach to building the backbone that is needed for short-term successes to long-term gains that provide better healthcare delivery and treatment outcomes from diseases,&#8221; he added.
In addition to setting its first lab, the CEO says the company increasing its biobanking capacity by 5x and is counts that as a major success.
During its last raise, 54gene had a biobank capacity for 60,000 samples. If Ene-Obong comments are anything to go by, the two-year-old company currently has a biobank with over 300,000 samples, close to its longer-term aim to manage up to 500,000.
Another one is the recruitment and training of talent to generate and process data needed to produce insights for the company&#8217;s drug discovery efforts. 
Nigeria has a dearth of experienced clinicians and with the remaining few leaving in droves, it is not hard to see why it is a win for the company. Knowing this, 54gene plans to use part of the new funding to recruit and train more professionals. 
Other use of funding will expand its capabilities in sequencing, target identification and validation, and precision medicine clinical trials. Also of great importance is its expansion across the African continent.
To aid this expansion, 54gene will have to carry out partnerships. A recent one occurred between the company and the Tanzania Human Genetics Organization and Ene-Obong says 54gene is in varying stages of conversations with more partners. However, he was tight-lipped on who they might be.
&#8220;We are excited about our Africa-first approach which will see us expand to countries within East and West Africa in the coming year,&#8221; he added.
54gene made some hires to this end: Michelle Ephraim, Colm O&#8217;Dushlaine, Peter Fekkes, Teresia Bost, Jude Uzonwanne &#8212; all of who have decades of experience working with companies like Leica Biosystems, Regeneron Genetic Center, Novartis, Celgene, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 
Pan-African venture capital firm Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund led this round. Lead investor from the company&#8217;s <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/14/african-genomics-startup-54gene-raises-15m-led-by-adjuvant-capital/" target="_blank">Series A funding</a>, Adjuvant Capital invested once again with participation from other VCs including KdT Ventures, Plexo Capital, Endeavor Capital, and Ingressive Capital.

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="6fFAEF25Gz"><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/14/african-genomics-startup-54gene-raises-15m-led-by-adjuvant-capital/" target="_blank">African genomics startup 54gene raises $15M led by Adjuvant Capital</a></blockquote>

Less than 3% of genetic material used in global pharmaceutical research is from Africa. The staggering gap is quite surprising because Africans and people of African descent are reported to be more genetically diverse than any other population. Since launching in 2019, African genomics startup 54gene has been at the forefront of bridging this divide […]

Africa

Biotech

Funding

Science

54gene

Drug Discovery

Genomics

Precision Medicine

Whole-genome Sequencing

African genomics startup 54gene raises $25M to expand precision medicine capabilities

Flying Eze

The distance between their farms and the nearest processor is key for smallholder farmers who need to process their crops. And though Nigeria&#8217;s food processing systems have a keen resemblance to the West with respect to big factories and huge economies of scale in high-demand cities, farmers still suffer from poor logistics networks.
With distance and logistics problems, farmers&#8217; crops can go bad and when factories buy them, it affects their processing yields and price. Farmers, witnessing post-harvest loss, also get paid less and miss the opportunity to invest in their crops production.
Nigerian agritech startup <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/category/" target="_blank">Releaf</a> is solving this by building proprietary hardware and software solutions to make these farmers and food factories more efficient and profitable. Today, the company is announcing that it has raised $2.7 million in seed and grants towards this effort.
Pan-African focused venture capital firms Samurai Incubate Africa, Future Africa and Consonance Investment Managers led the round. Individual investors like Stephen Pagliuca, the chairman of Bain Capital and Justin Kan of Twitch also participated.
In addition to the seed round, the agritech startup secured  $1.5 million in grants from The Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) and USAID.
Founded by <a href="https://ng.linkedin.com/in/inzewi" target="_blank">Ikenna Nzewi</a> and <a href="https://ng.linkedin.com/in/uzomabayogu" target="_blank">Uzoma Ayogu</a>, Releaf focuses on value chains where smaller factories are set up near smallholder farmers. This allows them to get better processing yields and fewer logistics costs; in the end, the farmer has more money to work with.
When the pair started the company in 2017, the idea behind Relead was not concrete yet as the team, based in the U.S., had not figured out product-market fit. 
First, it planned to increase productivity in Nigeria&#8217;s agricultural sector using software. Even after graduating from <a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/releaf" target="_blank">Y Combinator&#8217;s summer batch</a> that year, Releaf toyed around with ideas around trade finance and a marketplace for buyers and sellers of agricultural products.
The team would get a clearer picture of what it wanted to build when the founders moved back to Nigeria. The Americans of Nigerian descent toured across 20 states and studied different value chains for crops spotting inefficiencies that could be solved by technology.
&#8220;We took a much more broad approach to what the solution would be, but we really wanted to decide on a specific crop to work in. And we found that opportunity in the oil palm sector,&#8221; Nzewi said to TechCrunch in an interview.
The oil palm market in Nigeria is a $3 billion one with over 4 million smallholder farmers cultivating farms where those crops are planted.
These farmers <a href="https://www.pwc.com/ng/en/assets/pdf/x-raying-the-nigeria-palm-oil-sector.pdf" target="_blank">drive 80% of the production</a> of oil palm. But since the industry is quite fragmented, they have many challenges processing the oil palm because it&#8217;s a crop that requires serious processing power to extract vegetable oil from it.
<img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2202947" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-2202947" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Site_Machine_Operator_Releaf-1024x683-1.jpg?w=680" alt="Releaf" width="680" srcset="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Site_Machine_Operator_Releaf-1024x683-1.jpg 1024w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Site_Machine_Operator_Releaf-1024x683-1.jpg?resize=150,100 150w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Site_Machine_Operator_Releaf-1024x683-1.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Site_Machine_Operator_Releaf-1024x683-1.jpg?resize=768,512 768w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Site_Machine_Operator_Releaf-1024x683-1.jpg?resize=680,454 680w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Site_Machine_Operator_Releaf-1024x683-1.jpg?resize=50,33 50w" sizes="(max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px" />Image Credits: Releaf
Farmers typically go through this process by using rocks or inappropriate hardware &#8212; ineffective processes that lead to low-quality oil palm largely unfit as input for high-quality vegetable oil manufacturing.
Nzewi says the team saw an opportunity and set out to build a technology to help farmers crack oil palm nuts. The result was Kraken, a proprietary patent-pending machine.
So here&#8217;s how the company&#8217;s business model works. Releaf buys nuts from the farmers, then uses the Kraken to crack the nuts and crush the kernels into vegetable oil. Releaf then sells the vegetable oil to FMCG processors and local manufacturers, mainly in Nigeria&#8217;s south-southern region.
&#8220;Nigeria has about 60% more demand for vegetable oil than it does supply. And it can not be met due to supply shortfall with imports because the government banned the importation of vegetable oil. So there is a need to take these smallholders who are driving 80% of production and make them more efficient so that we can have a better balance of supply and demand for vegetable oil,&#8221; Nzewi said about the pain point Releaf is addressing.
But still, why does the company think it can break into a competitive Nigerian vegetable oil market with hardly differentiable products?
Nzewi explains that the answer lies in the quality of products. Typically vegetable oil is driven by a free fatty acid (FFA) metric that measures vegetable oil&#8217;s impurity. The CEO claims that while the industry standard is about 5% FFA, Releaf produces at 3.5%.
Despite having an edge in quality of production, Releaf products are sold on an industry standard. Nzewi says that might not be the case in the future as the company is looking to finally take advantage of its product quality and increase prices to improve its profit margins. 
According to the company, Kraken already processes 500 tonnes of palm nuts. Its software connects to over 2,000 smallholder farmers who have supplied over 10 million kilograms of quality palm kernel nuts to food factories.
Regarding expansion, Nzewi noted that Releaf has more appetite for moving into new geographies instead of crop offerings. His argument is that processing oil palm and cultivation style is a straightforward method due to its similarities across West Africa.
But for crop expansion, the company may need to find crops that can be planted alongside oil palm and practice intercropping or work with crops like soybeans or groundnuts used in the vegetable oil industry.
<img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2202943" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-2202943" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Releaf-co-founders-1.jpg?w=680" alt="Releaf" width="680" srcset="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Releaf-co-founders-1.jpg 1620w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Releaf-co-founders-1.jpg?resize=150,100 150w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Releaf-co-founders-1.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Releaf-co-founders-1.jpg?resize=768,512 768w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Releaf-co-founders-1.jpg?resize=680,453 680w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Releaf-co-founders-1.jpg?resize=1536,1024 1536w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Releaf-co-founders-1.jpg?resize=50,33 50w" sizes="(max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px" />L-R: Uzoma Ayogu (CTO) and Ikenna Nzewi (CEO)
Releaf will use the seed investment to develop technology and deploy it to smallholder farmers, Nzewi tells me. Then the $1.5 million in grants will focus on providing working capital financing to these farmers. He adds that Releaf has run financing trials already this year where it has increased smallholder incomes by three to five times.
&#8220;We think there&#8217;s a really great opportunity to bring both physical technology and financial services to these communities to make them more productive. And it&#8217;s kind of central to our thesis,&#8221; the CEO said. &#8220;We believe that our smart factories can serve as an economic pillar in these rural communities and make it easier for us to supply these communities with other services that they can find valuable like access to working capital, payment for education, and access to insurance services. So we see the food processing as like the first step it cements us in the value chain.&#8221;
Earlier this year, agritech startups like Gro Intelligence and Aerobotics raised huge sums of venture capital and showed the sector&#8217;s promise in Africa. However, venture capital has slowed down over the past few months and Releaf&#8217;s investment brings that spotlight back to the sector, albeit briefly.
Rena Yoneyama, the managing partner at Samurai Incubate Africa, said Releaf&#8217;s novel approach sets it aside from other agritech startups the venture capital firm has engaged with.
“We believe the firm’s thesis on decentralizing food processing would have a strong match with Africa’s economic development landscape for the next few decades. Ikenna and Uzo are the perfect founders to disrupt this market in Nigeria and beyond. We are thrilled to back them as they innovate in providing both agro-processing and financial services to rural communities and farmers,” she added. 
Speaking on the investment as well, Iyin Aboyeji, general partner at co-lead investor Future Africa said, &#8220;&#8230;The team at Releaf is building the agro-allied industry of the future from the ground up, starting with palm oil which they have developed a novel technology to aggregate, deshell and process into critical ingredients like vegetable oil and glycerine. Future Africa is delighted to back Releaf to build the future of modern agriculture.”

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="kfBi9CG83h"><a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/south-africa-startup-aerobotics-raises-17m-led-by-naspers-foundry" target="_blank">South African startup Aerobotics raises $17M to scale its AI-for-agriculture platform</a></blockquote>

The distance between their farms and the nearest processor is key for smallholder farmers who need to process their crops. And though Nigeria’s food processing systems have a keen resemblance to the West with respect to big factories and huge economies of scale in high-demand cities, farmers still suffer from poor logistics networks. With distance […]

Recent Funding

Agriculture

Agritech

Crops

Kraken

Releaf

Vegetable Oil

Nigerian agritech startup Releaf secures $4.2M to scale its food processing technology

Funding startups that help manufacturers and sellers distribute products and merchants access them on a single platform keeps increasing across Africa.
Today, Cairo-based B2B e-commerce startup <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/category/" target="_blank">Capiter</a> continues that trend by raising a $33 million Series A round.
The investment was co-led by Quona Capital and MSA Capital. Other participating investors include Savola, Shorooq Partners, Foundation Ventures, Accion Venture Lab, and Derayah Ventures.
Capiter was launched in July 2020 by <a href="https://eg.linkedin.com/in/mahmoud-nouh-363a2b119" target="_blank">Mahmoud Nouh</a> and <a href="https://eg.linkedin.com/in/ahmed-nouh" target="_blank">Ahmed Nouh</a>. Speaking with TechCrunch, CEO Mahmoud Nouh says Capiter solves problems around reach and insights for suppliers and manufacturers.
Many of the manufacturers in Egypt today do not have the right infrastructure of the supply chain in place to reach merchants. Nouh says that manufacturers can only reach 30% of merchants in the market, but with Capiter, that number goes up between 80% to 100%.
Also, a large portion of the manufacturers&#8217; end trade happens via traditional channels where there is basically no transparency over data or market insights.
Using machine learning, Capiter says it helps these manufacturers gain critical insights into the markets they serve, the products they sell, and how they fair with competition.
Then for merchants, Capiter attends to three problems. The first is the inconvenience merchants have to deal with engaging several suppliers to find the right product. The second is transparency which involves some back and forth between merchants and manufacturers on pricing. The third is that merchants often have little or no access to working capital to get the right product and the right time.
With Capiter, merchants can order products from FMCGs and wholesalers while the company delivers them. Capiter also provides fair pricing and matching techniques that showcases a wide range of inventory for merchants.
Then it affords working capital to them to buy more products even when they are strapped with cash. Capiter partners with local banks in Egypt and the Central Bank to perform this.
Capiter has over 12 merchant types on its platform, including mom-and-pop stores, hotels, restaurants, cafes, electronic shops, supermarkets, grocery shops, and catering companies, each with its own customized solutions.
&#8220;We&#8217;re able to get the data from the products they buy. So we offer them the best solution on what they should sell, at what time and peak seasons, including when are the offerings happening. All of these are customized solutions that we offer,&#8221; said Mahmoud Nouh.
<img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2201379" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-2201379" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/FA6BB442-B689-42A1-B1CB-69FA509055E8.jpeg?w=680" alt="Capiter" width="680" srcset="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/FA6BB442-B689-42A1-B1CB-69FA509055E8.jpeg 5906w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/FA6BB442-B689-42A1-B1CB-69FA509055E8.jpeg?resize=150,90 150w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/FA6BB442-B689-42A1-B1CB-69FA509055E8.jpeg?resize=300,180 300w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/FA6BB442-B689-42A1-B1CB-69FA509055E8.jpeg?resize=768,461 768w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/FA6BB442-B689-42A1-B1CB-69FA509055E8.jpeg?resize=680,408 680w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/FA6BB442-B689-42A1-B1CB-69FA509055E8.jpeg?resize=1536,921 1536w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/FA6BB442-B689-42A1-B1CB-69FA509055E8.jpeg?resize=2048,1229 2048w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/FA6BB442-B689-42A1-B1CB-69FA509055E8.jpeg?resize=50,30 50w" sizes="(max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px" />The Capiter app
The company&#8217;s revenues are derived from little margins on the products bought from manufacturers and sold to merchants. Then on rebates for the suppliers and commission from the working capital provided to merchants. Capiter also makes money from providing market insights and data services to manufacturers and FMCGs.
Typically B2B e-commerce platforms operate either asset-light, inventory-heavy models. Nouh tells me that Capiter chose to use a hybrid model &#8212; making deliveries without owning any trucks to ensure scalability and owning inventory, especially for high turnover products helping the company with high availability and better pricing.
&#8220;This way has enabled us to scale the business in a very fast manner and at the same time, efficiently and reliably. Regarding warehouses and trucks, we don&#8217;t own them; we rent them. We deal with third-party logistics for transportation and we manage them.&#8221;
Over 50,000 merchants and 1,000 sellers use Capiter. According to CEO Nouh, the company has provided up to 6,000 SKUs. He also adds that the company is targeting an annualized revenue of $1 billion by next year.
&#8220;We&#8217;re on a very good trajectory for achieving this,&#8221; he added. &#8220;In terms of team members, we have a team of more than 1000 people at the moment, including in warehouses, delivery, etc. So we&#8217;ve seen good traction across all board,&#8221; he answered when asked about Capiter&#8217;s traction.
Quona Capital, the co-lead investor in this round, is known to have made some B2B e-commerce bets over the past years, for instance, Kenya&#8217;s Sokowatch. The investment in Capiter adds to the firm&#8217;s portfolio in that regard and a growing presence in the MENA region being its first check made in Egypt.
In a statement, Quona co-founder and managing partner Monica Brand Engel said, “Capiter’s embedded finance model, combined with its expertise and strong user engagement, can have a dramatic impact on the financial lives of SMEs, helping them optimize their income which helps communities to thrive.”
“SME supply chain inefficiencies are massive throughout the Middle East. We believe the key blocker is the lack of working capital in the system. Capiter has built an asset-light way to aggregate retailers and suppliers and facilitate credit into the system through a comprehensive multi-product offering such as commerce, credit financing, digital payments, bookkeeping and inventory management for SMEs, leveraging on the ecosystem built by the local banks and financial institutions.” adds Ben Harburg, partner at MSA Capital, a global VC that has invested in fintechs like Nubank and Klarna.
According to Ahmed Nouh, the company&#8217;s COO, Capiter will expand into new verticals like agriculture and pharmaceutical offerings.
The co-founder brings experience from the shipping and logistics space. Both he and Mahmoud are serial entrepreneurs. The latter&#8217;s journey is quite prominent, having worked in the mobility space as the co-founder and COO of Egyptian ride-hailing company SWVL. The company recently <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/egyptian-ride-sharing-company-swvl-plans-to-go-public-in-a-1-5b-spac-merger" target="_blank">announced a potential SPAC deal valuing it at $1.5 billion</a> and is one of the few African startups breeding a tech mafia. Ahmed Sabbah, another co-founder of the company, <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/sequoia-leads-5m-pre-seed-in-egypts-1-month-old-digital-bank-telda" target="_blank">now runs early-stage fintech startup Telda</a>.

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="u1CjNEA5mm"><a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/egyptian-ride-sharing-company-swvl-plans-to-go-public-in-a-1-5b-spac-merger" target="_blank">Egyptian ride-sharing company Swvl plans to go public in a $1.5B SPAC merger</a></blockquote>

Capiter has attracted a global team that brings together the expertise from companies like Careem and Flipkart needed to achieve the company’s targets, said Mahmoud.
He adds that the team, alongside the provision of financial services via partnerships with banks and its hybrid model, is how the company stands out in a competitive market, including the likes of Fatura, Bosta, and MaxAB.
Following this investment, the company plans to expand vertically (in terms of the buyer type) and geographically within the next year.
&#8220;We want to serve every single SME in the MENA region and expanding inside Egypt and globally.&#8221; He adds that Savola Group, one of its investors and the largest investor for FMCG products in the MENA region, will prove pivotal to this growth. Capiter also plans to diversify its financial services offerings to include payments.

Funding startups that help manufacturers and sellers distribute products and merchants access them on a single platform keeps increasing across Africa. Today, Cairo-based B2B e-commerce startup Capiter continues that trend by raising a $33 million Series A round. The investment was co-led by Quona Capital and MSA Capital. Other participating investors include Savola, Shorooq Partners, […]

Ecommerce

Finance

Startups

B2b E-commerce Retail

Egypt

Merchant

Middle East

Egyptian startup Capiter raises $33M to expand B2B e-commerce platform across MENA

China’s first data privacy laws go into effect on November 1, 2021. Will your company be in compliance? Modeled after the EU’s GDPR, the new regulations “[introduce] perhaps the most stringent set of requirements and protections for data privacy in the world,” writes Scott W. Pink, special counsel in O’Melveny’s Data Security & Privacy practice. […]

Extra Crunch roundup: China’s new data privacy law, fractional farming, debt vs. equity

Soldiers who staged an uprising in Guinea&#8217;s capital on Sunday said in a short broadcast on the West African nation&#8217;s state television that they have dissolved the constitution and the government in an apparent coup.
An unidentified soldier, draped in Guinea&#8217;s national flag and surrounded by eight other armed soldiers, said they planned to form a transitional government and would give further details later.
		
			Read more: <a class="c-readmore__link" href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8100286/marburg-virus-guinea-west-africa-who/" data-track-region="content-read-more" title="Guinea reports first-ever case of rare and deadly Marburg virus" target="_blank">
				Guinea reports first-ever case of rare and deadly Marburg virus			</a>
		
	
Heavy gunfire broke out near the presidential palace in the capital Conakry on Sunday morning, with several sources saying an elite national army unit led by a former French legionnaire, Mamady Doumbouya, was behind the unrest.
&#8212; Reporting by Bate Felix

An unidentified soldier, draped in Guinea’s national flag and surrounded by eight other armed soldiers, said they planned to form a transitional government.

Politics

World

Alpha Conde

Conakry

Guinea Coup

Guinea Upsrising

Soldiers Uprising Guinea

West Africa

Guinea soldiers say gov’t, constitution dissolved in apparent coup

Y Combinator&#8217;s summer batch of 2021 features 377 startups from 47 countries. It&#8217;s the 33rd Demo Day of the well-known accelerator and holds the largest cohort yet. YC S20 had 198 startups, so that&#8217;s a 90% increase from last year.
About half of the companies represented are based outside the U.S. The countries with the most representatives (aside from the U.S.) include India, with 33 startups; the U.K., with 18 startups; Mexico with 17; Singapore with 12; and Canada and Brazil, 11 each.
While the Demo Day for this year&#8217;s winter batch was held in a day, it&#8217;s two days for this summer batch. Today, 189 companies will pitch, while the rest will pitch tomorrow.
African startups also increased from 10 in the winter batch to 15 this time around, a record for African startups in a single YC cohort.
&#8220;This is the largest batch we have ever funded and it&#8217;s about 50% international. As a result, it is not surprising that this is the largest cohort from Africa,&#8221; Y Combinator managing director and group arptner Michael Seibel told TechCrunch when asked if any extra factor contributed to the rise in accepted African startups.
Another valid reason for the uptick could be that YC is getting more applications from Africa due to the recent success stories of Paystack and Flutterwave. At least, that&#8217;s the view shared by Kat Mañalac, the head of Outreach at YC.
&#8220;Alumni are always the best spokespeople and representatives for YC. A lot of African founders (and future founders) I&#8217;ve spoken to were encouraged by seeing Paystack do so well and get acquired. The success of a lot of our African alumni are inspiring more African teams to apply,&#8221; she told TechCrunch.
Nigeria leads the way again with five startups, while Egypt has four, Morocco has two, and Kenya, Ghana, Zambia and South Africa each have one. Here&#8217;s the list of African startups that made it to YC S21 in alphabetical order.
Amenli (Egypt)
Africa has the lowest insurance penetrations globally. In Egypt, the insurance penetration rate stands at a minuscule 1%.
Amenli, founded by Shady El Tohfa and Adham Nauman in 2020, is addressing an untapped $2 billion market, being the first licensed online insurance broker in the country.
Chari (Morocco)
A wave of disruption of digitizing informal retail stores is sweeping across emerging markets this year, and Chari is joining in on the action.
Sophia Alj and Ismael Belkhayat founded Chari in 2020. The company allows traditional retailers in Morocco and some parts of North Africa to order consumer goods via its platform and handles free delivery to their stores. Chari has a fintech side by providing these retailers with credit.
Fingo (Kenya)
Neobanks have taken the world by storm and Africa is the last frontier for this brand of fintech innovation. Fingo is providing an alternative brand of banking to African millennials, starting from Kenya.
Founded by Kiiru Muhoya Gitari Tirima James da Costa and Ian Njuguna in 2020, the digital bank claims to offer fees 90% cheaper than traditional banks in Kenya, among other services.
FloatPays (South Africa)
In South Africa, up to 5 million employees borrow money to meet their monthly needs when they exhaust their salaries. However, the lending options for these employees come with outrageous interest rates.
Simon Ward founded FloatPays in 2019 as an on-demand wage access platform to help employees access, spend, save and manage their money.
Freterium (Morocco)
Managers of delivery businesses handle hundreds or thousands of delivery points every day. With a fleet made up of many trucks or vans, there&#8217;s a need to drop a delivery plan for each at different locations daily. How do they optimize for costs and efficiency at the same time?
Enter Freterium. The company allows contractors, manufacturers, distributors and logisticians to plan and optimize their B2B or B2C shipments while providing a cloud platform for real-time visibility of shipments, logistics infrastructure and seamless collaboration that breaks down traditional organizational silos. Omar El Kouhene and Mehdi Cherif Alami founded Freterium in 2018.
Infiuss Health (Nigeria)
A large number of Africans are exempt from clinical research studies due to time constraints. Per reports, it can take up to ten months to conduct such studies in these climes.
Infiuss Health says it is building a decentralized platform for remote research and clinical trials in Africa. How? By connecting researchers directly to patients who want to participate in clinical research studies in less than a week.
The company was founded by Melissa Bime and Mbah Charles in 2020.
Lemonade Finance (Nigeria)
There are millions of African immigrants in Europe and North America. Some have established businesses in both these regions and also in Africa.
In another digital banking play, Lemonade Finance provides multi-currency accounts for these migrants to enable seamless transactions and banking. The company was founded by Rian Cochran and Ridwan Olalere in 2020
Mecho Autotech (Nigeria)
Repairing one&#8217;s vehicle can be a painstaking process in Africa due to pricing and quality issues. The latter is because many of these professionals (mechanics) are unvetted.
Ayoola Akinkunmi and Olusegun Owoade started Mecho Autotech in 2021 as an on-demand auto maintenance and repairs platform. Mecho Autotech has created a network of vetted mechanics, and via an app, car owners can book and pay for their services.
Odiggo (Egypt)
Like its predecessor on this list, Odiggo connects car owners with mobile mechanics in the Middle East. On the platform, car owners can also access extra services, which include car washing and maintenance.
Although Odiggo lists as a Dubai-based company on the YC database, it has origins in Egypt and launched operations first in the North African country.

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="vsi7GX3HIJ"><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/22/y-combinator-500-startups-plug-and-play-invest-in-odiggos-2-2m-seed-round/" target="_blank">Y Combinator, 500 Startups, Plug and Play invest in Odiggo’s $2.2M seed round</a></blockquote>

Payhippo (Nigeria)
Access to credit is still very much a problem to the millions of small and medium businesses in Nigeria, which make up most of the country&#8217;s businesses.
Founded by Zach Bijesse, Uche Nnadi and Chioma Okotcha in 2019, Payhippo provides loans to businesses that couldn&#8217;t ordinarily get loans or credit cards from banks or other financial institutions.
Pylon (Egypt)
Water and electricity distribution companies face losses from leakages and thefts when opening new revenue streams in emerging markets.
Pylon acts as an infrastructure management platform for these distribution companies and helps to reduce these losses. It was founded in 2017 by Ahmed Ashour and Omar Radi.
ShipBlu (Egypt)
When merchants start to grow their e-commerce businesses, it can be difficult to manage the end-to-end delivery and fulfilment needs. In Egypt, several platforms are already offering solutions to this ever-growing need, and ShipBlu is adding to that list.
Founded by Ahmed ElKawass, Abdelrahman Hosny and Ali Nasser in 2020, ShipBlu claims to offer a full suite of delivery services for e-commerce merchants from overnight to delivery to five- to seven-day delivery.
Suplias (Nigeria)
Another digitizing-informal-retail-stores play, this time from Nigeria. Suplias is a B2B marketplace where mom-and -op stores in Africa buy inventory directly from manufacturers using a mobile app.
The company was founded by Stephen Igwue, Michael Adesanya and Sefa Ikyaator in 2019.
Union54 (Zambia)
African fintechs are in the business of providing virtual and physical cards to their customers. However, it doesn&#8217;t come easy and cheap when done in partnership with banks.
Union54 is an alternative and provides an API for them to issue debit cards cheaper and faster. It was founded by Alessandra Martini and Perseus Mlambo in 2021.

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="04mIWFxn5l"><a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/the-first-zambian-startup-to-get-into-yc-is-developing-africas-first-card-issuing-api" target="_blank">The first Zambian startup to get into YC is developing Africa&#8217;s first card-issuing API</a></blockquote>

Yemaachi Biotechnology (Ghana)
Yaw Attua-Afari, Yaw Bediako, David Hutchful and Joyce Ngoi founded Yemaachi Biotechnology in 2020. The startup&#8217;s idea is to diversify precision cancer diagnostics and treatments across the continent, starting with Ghana.
An estimated 752,000 new cancer cases, 4% of the world&#8217;s total, occurred in sub-Saharan Africa in 2018. Yemaachi is working to lower the burden cancer causes by creating molecular diagnostics optimized for all Africans.

African startups also increased from 10 in the winter batch to 15 this time around, a record for African startups in a single YC cohort.

Y Combinator

This YC Summer batch features the largest group of African startups yet

A milestone for <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/category/ target="_blank">Jolla</a>, the Finnish startup behind the Sailfish OS &#8212; which formed, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/10/can-jolla-become-meegos-saviour-ceo-plans-two-smartphones-already/" target="_blank">almost a decade ago</a>, when a band of Nokia staffers left to keep the torch burning for a mobile linux-based alternative to Google&#8217;s Android &#8212; today it&#8217;s announcing hitting profitability.
The mobile OS licensing startup describes 2020 as a &#8220;turning point&#8221; for the business &#8212; reporting revenues that grew 53% YoY, and EBITDA (which provides a snapshot of operational efficiency) standing at 34%.
It has a new iron in the fire too now &#8212; having recently started offering a new licensing product (called AppSupport for Linux Platforms) which, as the name suggests, can provide linux platforms with standalone compatibility with general Android applications &#8212; without a customer needing to licence the full Sailfish OS (the latter has of course baked in Android app compatibility since 2013).
Jolla says AppSupport has had some &#8220;strong&#8221; early interest from automotive companies looking for solutions to develop their in-case infotainment systems &#8212; as it offers a way for embedded Linux-compatible platform the capability to run Android apps without needing to opt for Google&#8217;s automotive offerings. And while plenty of car makers have opted for Android, there are still players Jolla could net for its &#8216;Google-free&#8217; alternative.
Embedded linux systems also run in plenty of other places, too, so it&#8217;s hopeful of wider demand. The software could be used to enable an IoT device to run a particularly popular app, for example, as a value add for customers.
&#8220;Jolla is doing fine,&#8221; says CEO and co-founder Sami Pienimäki. &#8220;I&#8217;m happy to see the company turning profitable last year officially.
&#8220;In general it&#8217;s the overall maturity of the asset and the company that we start to have customers here and there &#8212; and it&#8217;s been honestly a while that we&#8217;ve been pushing this,&#8221; he goes, fleshing out the reasons behind the positive numbers with trademark understatement. &#8220;The company is turning ten years in October so it&#8217;s been a long journey. And because of that we&#8217;ve been steadily improving our efficiency and our revenue.
&#8220;Our revenue grew over 50% since 2019 to 2020 and we made €5.4M revenue. At the same time the cost base of the operation has stablized quite well so the sum of those resulted to nice profitability.&#8221;
While the consumer mobile OS market has &#8212; for years &#8212; been almost entirely sewn up by Google&#8217;s Android and Apple&#8217;s iOS, Jolla licenses its open source Sailfish OS to governments and business as an alternative platform they can shape to their needs &#8212; without requiring any involvement of Google.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/29/jollas-sailfish-os-now-certified-as-russias-first-android-alternative/" target="_blank">Russia was one of the early markets that tapped in</a>.
The case for digital sovereignty in general &#8212; and an independent (non-US-based) mobile OS platform provider, specifically &#8212; has been strengthened in recent years as geopolitical tensions have played out via the medium of tech platforms; leading to, in some cases, infamous bans on foreign companies being able to access US-based technologies.
In a related development <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/huawei-officially-launches-android-alternative-harmonyos-for-smartphones" target="_blank">this summer</a>, China&#8217;s Huawei launched its own Android alternative for smartphones, which it&#8217;s called HarmonyOS.

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="fpo2g6UZo9"><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/20/huawei-responds-android/" target="_blank">Huawei responds to Android ban with service and security guarantees, but its future is unclear</a></blockquote>

Pienimäki is welcoming of that specific development &#8212; couching it as a validation of the market in which Sailfish plays.
&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t necessarily see Huawei coming out with the HarmonyOS value proposition and the technology as a competitor to us &#8212; I think it&#8217;s more proving the point that there is appetite in the market for something else than Android itself,&#8221; he says when we ask whether HarmonyOS risks eating Sailfish&#8217;s lunch.
&#8220;They are tapping into that market and we are tapping into that market. And I think both of our strategies and messages support each other very firmly.&#8221;
Jolla has been working on selling Sailfish into the Chinese market for several years &#8212; and that sought for business remains a work in progress at this stage. But, again, Pienimäki says Jolla doesn&#8217;t see Huawei&#8217;s move as any kind of blocker to its ambitions of licensing its Android alternative in the Far East.
&#8220;The way we see the Chinese market in general is that it&#8217;s been always open to healthy competition and there is always competing solutions &#8212; actually heavily competing solutions &#8212; in the Chinese market. And Huawei&#8217;s offering one and we are happy to offer Sailfish OS for this very big, challenging market as well.&#8221;
&#8220;We do have good relationships there and we are building a case together with our local partners also to access the China market,&#8221; he adds. &#8220;I think in general it&#8217;s also very good that big corporations like Huawei really recognize this opportunity in general &#8212; and this shapes the overall industry so that you don&#8217;t need to, by default, opt into Android always. There are other alternatives around.&#8221;

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="fQrlQnmLjb"><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/09/the-other-smartphone-business/" target="_blank">The other smartphone business</a></blockquote>

On AppSupport, Jolla says the automative sector is &#8220;actively looking for such solutions&#8221;, noting that the &#8220;digital cockpit is a key differentiator for car markers &#8212; and arguing that makes it a strategically important piece for them to own and control.
&#8220;There&#8217;s been a lot of, let&#8217;s say, positive vibes in that sector in the past few years &#8212; new comers on the block like Tesla have really shaken the industry so that the traditional vendors need to think differently about how and what kind of user experience they provide in the cockpit,&#8221; he suggests.
&#8220;That&#8217;s been heavily invested and rapidly developing in the past years but I&#8217;m going to emphasize that at the same time, with our limited resources, we&#8217;re just learning where the opportunities for this technology are. Automative seems to have a lot of appetite but then [we also see potential in] other sectors &#8212; IoT&#8230; heavy industry as well&#8230; we are openly exploring opportunities&#8230; but as we know automotive is very hot at the moment.&#8221;
&#8220;There is plenty of general linux OS base in the world for which we are offering a good additional piece of technology so that those operating solutions can actually also tap into &#8212; for example &#8212; selected applications. You can think of like running the likes of Spotify or Netflix or some communications solutions specific for a certain sector,&#8221; he goes on.
&#8220;Most of those applications are naturally available both for iOS and Android platforms. And those applications as they simply exist the capability to run those applications independently on top of a linux platform &#8212; that creates a lot of interest.&#8221;
In another development, Jolla is in the process of raising a new growth financing round &#8212; it&#8217;s targeting €20M &#8212; to support its push to market AppSupport and also to put towards further growing its Sailfish licensing business.
It sees growth potential for Sailfish in Europe, which remains the biggest market for licensing the mobile OS. Pienimäki also says it&#8217;s seeing &#8220;good development&#8221; in certain parts of Africa. Nor has it given up on its ambitions to crack into China.
The growth round was opened to investors in the summer and hasn&#8217;t yet closed &#8212; but Jolla is confident of nailing the raise.
&#8220;We are really turning a next chapter in the Jolla story so exploring to new emerging opportunities &#8212; that requires capital and that&#8217;s what are looking for. There&#8217;s plenty of money available these days, in the investor front, and we are seeing good traction there together with the investment bank with whom we are working,&#8221; says Pienimäki.
&#8220;There&#8217;s definitely an appetite for this and that will definitely put us in a better position to invest further &#8212; both to Sailfish OS and the AppSupport technology. And in particular to the go-to market operation &#8212; to make this technology available for more people out there in the market.&#8221;

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="IIKeCUzpKW"><a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/google-is-making-it-easier-to-bring-android-apps-to-your-car" target="_blank">Google is making it easier to bring Android apps to your car</a></blockquote>


<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="UFGPLTsDSm"><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/01/google-opens-android-automotive-os-to-spotify-other-media-app-developers/" target="_blank">Google opens Android Automotive OS to Spotify, other media app developers</a></blockquote>

&nbsp;

A milestone for Jolla, the Finnish startup behind the Sailfish OS — which formed, almost a decade ago, when a band of Nokia staffers left to keep the torch burning for a mobile linux-based alternative to Google’s Android — today it’s announcing hitting profitability. The mobile OS licensing startup describes 2020 as a “turning point” […]

Europe

Mobile

Android

Appsupport

Automotive

China

Google

Harmonyos

Huawei

Jolla

Jolla hits profitability ahead of turning ten, eyes growth beyond mobile

Lagos and Toronto-based mobility startup <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/category/" target="_blank">Plentywaka</a> has raised a $1.2 million seed round to scale its operations on the back of leaving the Techstars Toronto accelerator program last month. 
Canadian-based VC firm The Xchange led the round, SOSV and Shock Ventures participated, while Techstars Toronto made a follow-on investment. Nigerian firms Argentil Capital Partners and ODBA &amp; Co Ventures took part in the seed round, alongside some angel investors from Canada, other parts of Africa, and the U.S.
In March, when TechCrunch <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/nigerias-plentywaka-gets-backing-from-techstars-plans-expansion-to-canada" target="_blank">covered</a> Plentywaka, CEO Onyeka Akumah said the two-year-old company eyed both regional and global expansion. There hasn&#8217;t been much development on the latter except that the company set up its headquarters in Canada. However, for the former, it&#8217;s in the form of an acquisition. The company says it has fully acquired Ghanaian mobility startup Stabus but declined to comment on the acquisition price.
Plentywaka is primarily a bus-booking platform but, per its website, has over 900 vehicles ranging from cars to vans to buses. The company provides intrastate travel (via its Dailywaka offering) and interstate travel (via its Travelwaka offering) for its users via a mobile application. Since going live in September 2019,  Plentywaka says it has acquired over 80,000 users while completing up to half a million rides.
Stabus, on the other hand, commenced operations in Ghana a month after Plentywaka&#8217;s launch. Its co-founder and CEO, Isidore Kpotufe, shared that the startup has since moved over 100,000 people within the country&#8217;s capital city Accra using different vehicles.
<img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2192483" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-2192483" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/20210823_000925.jpg?w=680" alt="Plentywaka" width="680" srcset="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/20210823_000925.jpg 967w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/20210823_000925.jpg?resize=150,90 150w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/20210823_000925.jpg?resize=300,180 300w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/20210823_000925.jpg?resize=768,461 768w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/20210823_000925.jpg?resize=680,409 680w, https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/20210823_000925.jpg?resize=50,30 50w" sizes="(max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px" />The Plentywaka and Stabus executives
Akumah tells TechCrunch that before talks on an acquisition started, he and Kpotufe kept in touch frequently on a personal and business level since they launched their respective companies two years ago. 
Then in April this year, Isidore, intrigued by the pace at which Plentywaka was scaling, asked Akumah if his company had plans to scale to Ghana. The Plentywaka CEO answered in the affirmative, revealing a timeline edging towards the end of the year. That meant competition, but the duo thought the better outcome for both companies was to merge.
&#8220;Isidore is someone I&#8217;ve known for going to two years now. And I&#8217;ve seen what he has done with Stabus and I understand exactly how they operate. So it was an easy yes for us to do this,&#8221; Akumah said to TechCrunch.
The complexities of what structure to use came up; run with the Stabus brand or change it. Eventually, they settled for the latter, renaming the acquired 12,000-user strong business to Plentywaka Ghana. Some of Stabus&#8217; (now Plentywaka Ghana) customers include multinationals like MTN and GB Foods. Meanwhile, Kpotufe becomes Country Manager of the new business.
“Plentywaka’s acquisition of Stabus is a firm statement about our commitment to grow and build the largest shared mobility startup in Africa, one country at a time. Isidore is a brilliant entrepreneur and we are excited about having him and his team execute our plans for the Ghanaian market,” Akumah said in a statement.
In Nigeria, the company caters to travelers across 21 cities. Travelers in Accra will begin to use the service when Plentywaka Ghana goes live on September 16. And the next plan after Accra is to replicate the expansion in six other African countries within 24 months. Akumah also mentioned that Plentywaka is raising its Series A to ramp up these expansion efforts.
&#8220;We are incredibly excited by our investment in Plentywaka. Techstars is a huge believer in the future of Africa and a proud supporter of African entrepreneurs. Onyeka is a two-time Techstars founder which deepens this relationship further,&#8221; managing director of Techstars Sunil Sharma said in a statement.
Speaking on the seed round, managing partner at lead investor The Xchange, Todd Finch said, “The Xchange is on a mission to fuel purpose-driven founders with the capital and resources they need to realize the world-changing potential of their ideas. Given Onyeka’s proven track record, his team&#8217;s undeniable thirst for making an impact, and Plentywaka’s impressive growth, we knew this was an opportunity we wanted to invest in.” 

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="eBxsMaH61S"><a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/nigerias-plentywaka-gets-backing-from-techstars-plans-expansion-to-canada" target="_blank">Nigeria&#8217;s Plentywaka gets backing from Techstars, plans expansion to Canada</a></blockquote>

Lagos and Toronto-based mobility startup Plentywaka has raised a $1.2 million seed round to scale its operations on the back of leaving the Techstars Toronto accelerator program last month.  Canadian-based VC firm The Xchange led the round, SOSV and Shock Ventures participated, while Techstars Toronto made a follow-on investment. Nigerian firms Argentil Capital Partners and […]

Fundings & Exits

Transportation

Ghana

Nigeria

Plentywaka

Sosv

Techstars

Mobility startup Plentywaka picks up $1.5M seed, acquires Ghana’s Stabus

Hello and welcome back to <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/equity/id1215439780" target="_blank">Equity</a>, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
For our Wednesday show this week, <a href="https://twitter.com/nmasc_?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" target="_blank">Natasha</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/alex" target="_blank">Alex</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/dannycrichton" target="_blank">Danny</a> had colleague <a href="https://twitter.com/ulonnaya" target="_blank">Tage Kene-Okafor</a> on the show to chat about the burgeoning African startup scene. Tage has become TechCrunch&#8217;s key correspondent in the area, chronicling the continents expanding venture capital totals, public company performance, and startup ecosystem.
Given that we&#8217;ve paid attention to just how much money African startups are raising, we wanted to have Tage on to give us a better, deeper understanding of the continent&#8217;s technology activity. Here&#8217;s what we got into:
<ul>
<li>The power of Y Combinator in Africa: Is the well-known American accelerator a kingmaker in Africa? Or are we merely seeing more of its activity thanks to our own information biases?</li>
<li>Fintech as core focus: As in many markets, fintech investment and startup activity stand out in Africa. We wanted to better understand why that&#8217;s the case in Africa, and what startups are building in the realm of financial technology.</li>
<li>African ecommerce: The continent&#8217;s ecommerce market is perhaps best known through the lens of Jumia, a public tech company that works in the sale of goods online, and their delivery. How quickly is ecommerce growing in Africa, and which startups could be the next breakouts? We asked Tage.</li>
</ul>
Equity is back on Friday with our weekly news roundup!




Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT, Wednesday, and Friday morning at 7:00 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1215439780" target="_blank">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://overcast.fm/itunes1215439780/equity" target="_blank">Overcast</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/5IEYLip3eDppcOmy5DmphC?si=rZDFHv2sQUul_g94iCRgpQ" target="_blank">Spotify</a> and all the casts.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. For our Wednesday show this week, Natasha and Alex and Danny had colleague Tage Kene-Okafor on the show to chat about the burgeoning African startup scene. Tage has become TechCrunch’s key correspondent in the area, chronicling the continents expanding venture capital […]

African Startups

Equity

Equity Podcast

The hottest fintech market you aren’t paying attention to

Unbundling financial data through APIs and driving data-driven insights with value-add products in Africa keeps getting more exciting as major players continue to raise more money for scale.
Less than a year after its $3 million seed round, San Francisco- and Africa-based fintech <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/category/" target="_blank">Pngme</a> has snapped up another $15 million for its financial data infrastructure play. The company is also describing itself as a machine learning-as-a-service platform.
Octopus Ventures led the Series A round, with follow-on investment from Lateral Capital, EchoVC and Raptor Group.  Other investors like Unshackled Ventures, Future Africa and Two Small Fish Ventures participated too. Pngme also received checks from angel investors; some include Hayden Simmons of RallyCap, Plaid&#8217;s Dan Kahn, Richard Talbot of RBC Capital and Kyle Ellicott of Intersect VC.
Pngme&#8217;s platform caters to fintechs and other financial institutions across sub-Saharan Africa. When the founders, Brendan Playford and Cate Rung, last spoke with TechCrunch, Pngme was heading out of stealth mode in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="cSuHt5i2rx"><a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/pngme-a-financial-data-platform-closes-3m-seed-to-accelerate-growth-in-sub-saharan-africa" target="_blank">Pngme, a financial data platform, closes $3M seed to accelerate growth in Sub-Saharan Africa</a></blockquote>

Right now, Pngme has three core products for clients in these three markets. In addition to its already known API and mobile SDK, Pngme has added a customer management platform. The company says combining the three products will drive its customers&#8217; adoption and use of personalized user experiences and financial products.
In a conversation with TechCrunch, Playford references building personalized user fintech experiences to what Alipay and WeChat have done in the past couple of years.
When users sign up, both platforms provide the right recommendations on every financial service before offering the right product when they make up their minds.
&#8220;It&#8217;s a highly data-driven user experience. And every fintech or bank wants to provide that same data-driven user experience. From instant loans or savings, or overdrafts, or whatever it might be, it&#8217;s all just like a user experience around a product,&#8221; Playford said, referring to both Chinese super-app juggernauts. &#8220;If you get to the core of all of the business problems for financial institutions, they&#8217;re looking at doing two things. One is they&#8217;re looking at lowering their customer acquisition costs. And then they&#8217;re looking at increasing the lifetime value of their customers.&#8221;
Playford says Pngme wants to mirror this playbook. But why has it become important for the company all of a sudden?
Most African financial institutions and fintechs are racing to offer fully customized user experiences and financial products tailored to their customers’ needs. To fuel these products and user experiences, data infrastructure is needed. Machine learning models are supposed to be trained to acquire, retain and maximize the lifetime value of a customer. 
These processes can be expensive and time-consuming, leaving them with the difficult task of choosing between building the infrastructure or serving their customer.
Pngme allows financial institutions and fintechs to collect and aggregate financial data at scale. The company says its mobile SDK and data processing pipelines collect alternative financial data and unify it with other data sources to create a holistic picture of an individual&#8217;s financial behavior.   
&#8220;The pain point we solve is the cost of building the infrastructure is very high. And the data science, the data engineering talent, just globally is really hard to find. So building a data infrastructure as a service works really well because it&#8217;s a subscription to get those services which you&#8217;d normally need a five- or six-person team to build this structure.&#8221;
The close of Pngme&#8217;s Series A brings its total investment to $18.5 million, making it the most funded in this fintech category across the continent. Other prominent startups include South African-based <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/stitch-emerges-from-stealth-with-4m-for-its-api-fintech-play-in-africa" target="_blank">Stitch</a>, and Nigeria&#8217;s <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/nigerian-fintech-okra-raises-3-5m-backed-by-accenture-ventures-and-susa-ventures" target="_blank">Okra</a>, <a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/nigerias-mono-raises-millions-to-power-the-internet-economy-in-africa" target="_blank">Mono</a> and OnePipe.
Although each platform has morphed into providing more complex data offerings, Playford says one of the important things Pngme has considered since February is clearly distinguishing itself from these other platforms. 
&#8220;What we do is that we&#8217;ve kind of really differentiated ourselves to be not just collecting the data that we can see but also, we can connect to Mono data, Okra data, and we can connect with banks&#8217; data. We essentially merge all that data and then put machine learning models on top for the clients. That can be predictive credit models, segmentation models and really positioning ourselves as a data processing infrastructure for banks and fintechs.&#8221;
Playford&#8217;s explanation of how he thinks Pngme is different resonates with the way other founders think of their own platforms. But time will tell how long these products can keep being dissimilar.

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="EdRKKwHFA8"><a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/african-startups-join-global-funding-boom-as-fintech-shines" target="_blank">African startups join global funding boom as fintech shines</a></blockquote>

Pngme&#8217;s proposition has found traction with some tier-one banks in Nigeria and South Africa like ABSA, UBA, First Bank, fintechs Kuda, Umba, Renmoney, CredPal and credit bureaus like TransUnion Africa.
Pngme will use the investment to acquire more customers, it says. One way the company plans to make this happen is by expanding its executive team. Pngme is hiring Lorraine Kageni Maina as the CSO and Nick Masson as the CTO.
Alongside key executive hires, Pngme is expanding its data science, engineering and sales teams globally. COO Rung says Pngme’s infrastructure has processed billions of data points from hundreds of financial institutions across sub-Saharan Africa. The next plan is to double down on its Insights Library product and expand its third-party data connections to other markets over the next year.
For Octopus Ventures, the lead investor in this round, Pngme shows the need for actionable data to drive the explosion of digital fintech services for Africans.
On why the VC firm invested, Tosin Agbabiaka said, &#8220;The elegance of the technology solution, combined with an exceptional team and strong market traction with large institutions underlines our belief that Pngme will power the next generation of financial services in Africa, helping to give millions of more people access to banking and lending.”

<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="aiBG2oqpkT"><a href="https://www.flyingeze.com/news/nigerian-fintech-okra-raises-3-5m-backed-by-accenture-ventures-and-susa-ventures" target="_blank">Nigerian fintech Okra raises $3.5M backed by Accenture Ventures and Susa Ventures</a></blockquote>

Unbundling financial data through APIs and driving data-driven insights with value-add products in Africa keeps getting more exciting as major players continue to raise more money for scale. Less than a year after its $3 million seed round, San Francisco- and Africa-based fintech Pngme has snapped up another $15 million for its financial data infrastructure […]

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