Participated · Series B · Feb 2022

Tribal provides SMBs in emerging markets with corporate spend management, physical and virtual cards, international and local wires, and financing for payments. The company launched a beta spend management platform in December 2019 and introduced Tribal Pay in 2020, enabling transfers to 180+ countries and payment financing for up to 120 days. Tribal serves a fast-growing client base across more than 22 countries and grew its LatAm volume by 90x in 2021. Proceeds from the latest round will be used to expand professional teams across Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile as the company scales in LatAm. The founding and management team includes former leaders from HSBC, Visa, Experian, Mercado Libre, American Express, Nubank, Marqeta, and Didi Pay. To date the company has raised a total of $140 million including the newly announced $60M Series B. Tribal Credit issues virtual and physical multi-currency business Visa cards (Tribal Card) and a payments product (Tribal Pay) aimed at startups and SMBs in emerging markets. The company uses a proprietary AI-driven underwriting process to evaluate businesses and approve credit lines without impacting founders’ personal credit. Tribal’s platform also offers spend management tools for distributed teams and wire/treasury capabilities. Its largest market is Mexico, and it lists customers including Minu, Ben and Frank, Fairplay and SLM. Tribal reports 10x year-over-year growth and has grown headcount to 75 employees from 31 the prior year. The company joined Visa’s Fintech Fast Track Program and received $3 million from the Stellar Development Foundation as part of the recent raise. Tribal says it is exploring four additional Latin American markets and expects to be operational in one new market by year-end. Tribal Credit provides a business credit-card product aimed at SMEs and startups in emerging markets, combining virtual corporate cards, configurable spending limits, and instant card suspension. Its platform uses AI-driven analytics and a proprietary AI algorithm developed from NYU research to surface spend insights and control costs. The company issues an unlimited number of virtual cards to employees and emphasizes transparency and control over corporate expenditures. Tribal Credit is in private beta and has a distributed team mainly based in San Francisco with remote teams in Cairo, Dubai, and New York. The founding team includes serial entrepreneurs, data scientists, and fintech executives with backgrounds in banking, risk, compliance, and scaling in emerging markets. With new capital, the company plans to scale operations, pursue partnerships, and expand development, sales, and operations teams.

Participated · Seed · Nov 2021

Bypa-ss offers HealthTag, a health information exchange product delivered as a mobile app and physical card that aggregates patients' medical records and enables online payments, prescriptions, and lab access. For hospitals and physicians HealthTag provides an integrated clinic management system that collates records from different providers to give visibility into a patient’s full history. For users the product centralizes records, enables payments, and offers up to a 70% discount from participating healthcare providers when paying out of pocket. The company was founded by Andrew Saad in 2019 and began in Shebin El Kom, Menofia, before scaling to five other cities across Egypt. Bypa-ss says it has a network of more than 3,000 healthcare providers, its customer base has grown 150% since the start of the year, and headcount has grown fivefold since early 2021. The company plans to use new funding to accelerate growth in Egypt, add features, and further develop a high-end patient mobile app to facilitate information exchange.

Participated · Equity · Oct 2021

Brass is a Nigerian business-banking startup offering banking services to business customers. The company faced withdrawal-processing delays beginning in October 2023 after a major liquidity partner pulled out, leaving it under significant strain. That strain led Brass to furlough employees on March 4 and to seek support from larger startups; approaches to Flutterwave (for acquisition) and Moniepoint (for capital) did not materialize. Last week Brass closed a capital injection — an undisclosed mix of debt and equity — from a group of investors, with several Nigerian fintech leaders reportedly working behind the scenes. Investors said the ultimate goal of the investment is service delivery. The new funding is intended to provide working capital to resolve operational issues and restore customer-facing services such as withdrawals. Brass offers a business bank account wrapped with credit and payment services, payroll and expense management, API support, cash-flow analytics, team and contact management, POS, and debit and credit cards. The company is betting heavily on its credit product, Brass Capital, which has disbursed more than $2 million in working-capital financing after six months in private beta with roughly two dozen customers. Brass serves over 5,000 customers, including schools, malls, restaurants and fintechs, and generates revenue from providing credit and API calls. Founded in July 2020 by Sola Akindolu (ex-Kudi) and Emmanuel Okeke (ex-Paystack), the team emphasizes supporting varied SME cash-flow and financial-operations needs. Brass plans to expand across Africa, with incorporation finalized in Kenya and intentions to enter Kenya and South Africa next year, and it has a partnership with Flutterwave to aid that expansion.

Participated · Seed · May 2021

Lami Technologies builds an end-to-end digital insurance platform and a product-agnostic API that lets banks, e-commerce and logistics firms embed and distribute tailored insurance products. The company entered the market in January 2020 with a consumer-facing product (Griffin) before pivoting to its B2B2C API platform. Its API is integrated with more than 15 entities across logistics, e-commerce, banking and fintech and it works with 25 underwriting partners; notable clients include Lipa Later, Sendy, Kwara, Jumia, MarketForce and Stanbic Bank Insurance. Lami is pursuing digitization of agents and brokers, expanding product lines, and has expanded into Egypt and Nigeria while entering Malawi and the DRC through the acquisition of Bluewave. Operational metrics show policy volume grew to 85,000 from 70,000 at the end of 2021, and premiums underwritten quadrupled to $800,000 last year with a projection to exceed $2 million this year. The company says it will use funding to hire, fast-track expansion and drive underwriter partnerships; it also appointed longtime CFO Roy Perlot as a co-founder. Lami Technologies offers an API-driven B2B2C platform that lets banks, startups and other businesses embed, customize and distribute insurance products to end users. The company co-designs products with underwriting partners and runs an insurance marketplace, integrating with partners such as Stanbic Bank, HR platform WorkPay and e-commerce platform Jumia. Lami supports more than 25 active underwriters (including Britam, Pioneer and Madison Insurance) and distributes over 30 product types across motor, medical, employee benefits and device insurance. Since founding in 2018, the startup has sold more than 5,000 policies and reduced claims processing timelines from roughly 90 days to about a week. Lami’s product lets partners quote, customize benefits, adjust premiums, issue policy documents and access claims via the API. The company plans to use its new funding to hire, improve its technology and expand its presence across Africa.

Participated · Seed · Mar 2021

Termii is a YC-backed API-based communications platform that enables businesses—particularly fintechs—to engage customers via SMS, voice messaging, mobile tokens, alerts and two-way support. Founded in 2017, the company serves a growing base of enterprise customers through both APIs and a no-code campaign dashboard. Termii reports that over 10,000 businesses now rely on its platform monthly, up from 500+ fintech customers in 2021, and message transactions climbed from one million to 400 million. Annual recurring revenue reportedly increased 30x over that period. The company recently launched TermiiGo, a B2B2C mobile app offering time-based OTPs, direct-to-mobile notifications, local/international calling and global eSIM activation under an MVNO-like model. Termii plans to expand product offerings (calls, OTPs, eSIM) and enter Francophone African markets beginning with Ivory Coast, with planned physical launches in Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Ghana and the U.S. Termii offers an API-based communications platform-as-a-service that enables businesses to send multichannel messaging (WhatsApp, voice, SMS) and perform customer verification and authentication. Founded by Gbolade Emmanuel and Ayomide Awe and launched in 2017, Termii targets B2B2C customers and has attracted more than 500 fintech startups and over 1,000 businesses and developers to its platform. Instead of a subscription model, Termii uses a virtual wallet tied to a bank account and charges per message and per successful verification, accepting mobile money, bank transfers and cards. The company saw rapid traction after joining Y Combinator in early 2020, with messaging transactions up 1,000% that year and ARR rising 400%. Revenue is reported to be growing about 60% month-on-month and 68% of messaging volume is tied to online financial transactions; Nigeria accounts for 76% of transactions while Algeria represents about 15%. Termii plans to use the new seed capital to expand across Africa, including a physical presence in Algeria, and to roll out additional messaging offerings. Termii was founded in 2014 by Gbolade Emmanuel (CEO) and Ayomide Awe (CTO) and rebranded in 2017. The company offers a Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) focused on delivering dependable communication channels for African businesses. Termii is now a Delaware company with operations in Silicon Valley while maintaining a primary market focus in Africa, particularly Nigeria. The founders spent three months in the Bay Area as part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2020 batch, with Demo Day delivered over video due to the COVID-19 outbreak. As part of YC, Termii received a $150,000 investment in exchange for 7% equity. The company has previously received funding from Future Hub (backed by Transsion) and Microtraction and intends to continue operating across multiple locations with a focus on Nigeria. Termii is a Nigerian communication and collaboration platform offering an API-based communication infrastructure that drives repeated interactions between customers and brands through multi-channel real-time messaging and a per-billing wallet system. The product focuses on customer retention by segmenting users and delivering personalized marketing messages and includes customer authentication and verification APIs. The company was started in 2014 as a team-networking platform by co-founders Gbolade Emmanuel and Ayomide Awe, rebranded and officially launched in October 2017. Termii is headquartered in Lagos and serves customers in Nigeria, Morocco, Ghana, and Benin Republic. The startup has grown from about 100 businesses at launch to roughly 1,000 clients, including hundreds of top brands such as Bankly and Fundall. It intends to use the $30,000 seed from Future Hub to optimise the platform across Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya and upgrade authentication and verification APIs; until now it has been sustained by founders' investments. Termii is a corporate networking and collaboration platform that integrates social and business tools to help businesses improve office collaboration and productivity. Its core product includes co-working remote workspaces, real-time Team Note document editing, staff grouping, task assigner, and a presentation board supporting video and slides. The platform offers an enterprise version with tailored features, and it has a community of more than 1,000 investors who can access venture stories and progress updates. Termii recently partnered with Newswire to connect ventures to over 100,000 journalists and more than 50 media outlets. The company has secured about $10,000 in funding (excluding investor-provided office space), is generating revenue from paying users, and has revised pricing to attract younger startups. CEO Gbolade Emmanuel says the company is developing beta services to improve revenue streams and plans continental expansion to markets including Tunisia, Morocco, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa.