Participated · Series B · Jul 2023

Kasha is a digital retail and last-mile distribution platform founded in 2016 that focuses on women’s health products alongside fast-moving consumer goods. It serves individual consumers, small resellers, pharmacies, hospitals, and clinics via website and USSD, and also operates a wholesale supply business after obtaining a pharmaceutical license. The company offers telehealth connections when customers lack prescriptions and provides inventory credit to pharmacies, clinics and hospitals. Kasha sources products directly from manufacturers to ensure authenticity and leverages last-mile channels and content to reach mass-market customers in urban and rural areas. Since its Series A, the company reports annual recurring revenue growth of 50x and says it will use new capital to expand across Africa and invest in strategic areas of the business. CEO Joanna Bichsel has stated ambitions to scale the business globally and potentially pursue a public listing in the future. Kasha is an e-commerce platform that aims to improve women’s access to health, hygiene and self-care products in East Africa. It sells and distributes items such as hand sanitisers, antibacterial soaps, masks and gloves. CEO Joanna Bichsel said the service can act as a safe channel to obtain these items during the Covid-19 pandemic and that the company plans to offer Covid-19 diagnostic rapid tests eventually. The article reports that Finnish development financier Finnfund invested $1 million in Kasha. The funding was described as potentially vital under Covid-19 because Kasha provides contactless access to essential products. No other financial metrics or prior rounds were reported in the article.

Participated · Equity · Aug 2022

Bankme builds and operates white‑label “mini banks” that map receivables opportunities, prospect clients using data intelligence, and operate credit across a client’s ecosystem. The platform lets businesses migrate operational services for factoring and securitization onto Bankme’s technology, reducing the need for physical infrastructure. Bankme plans to expand product lines to include payroll‑deductible loans, general loans, anticipation and locking of card receivables, and issuance of Cédula de Crédito Bancário (CCB). The company began operations in September 2020 and raised its first investment in January 2021. After the recent round its valuation was reported at R$57 million (up from an estimated R$20 million after the first raise). Proceeds will be used to optimize technology and hire talent, with a goal to double revenue and assets under management in 2022 and reach about 120 employees by the end of 2023.

Participated · Seed · Jun 2022

Afrikamart operates a digital marketplace and distribution platform for fresh produce, serving retailers and restaurant customers. Founded in 2018 by Albert and Mignane Diouf, the startup aggregates supply from roughly 2,000 farmers and delivers up to 10 tons of fresh food daily to about 500 regular customers across four Senegalese cities. The company aims to expand its network to 5,000 farmers and 2,000 shops by the end of the year. Its stated objectives include increasing efficiency, improving market transparency and consumer confidence, expanding the variety and quality of locally grown produce, eliminating intermediaries’ late payments, and reducing waste. Afrikamart plans to scale purchases from smallholder farmers nationwide and improve logistics and last-mile delivery of 14 fresh vegetable varieties to street vendors, small retailers, restaurants, and hotels in Dakar and Mbour. The recent funding will be used to support those operational and supply-chain expansions.

Participated · Series B · Jul 2021

Lidya is a digital lending platform that offers loans to small and medium businesses, with individual loans ranging from $500 to $50,000 and credit decisions delivered within 24 hours. The platform evaluates applicants with about 100 data points to build credit scores and assess risk. Founded in 2016 by Tunde Kehinde and Ercin Eksin after their experience at ACE and Jumia Nigeria, the company began in Nigeria and expanded to Poland and the Czech Republic in late 2019, fully launching operations there in early 2020. To date Lidya reports it has disbursed over 25,000 loans, has more than a 90% customer repeat rate, and has disbursed over $3 million in its two European markets, with an overall default rate below 1%. Lidya currently funds its loan book with equity rather than debt but intends to transition to debt financing after proving its algorithms, and is pursuing debt deals. The company plans to grow teams in Lagos, Prague and Warsaw and use new capital to scale lending operations and support lines of credit. Lidya is a financial services platform focused on improving access to credit for small and medium enterprises. Founded in 2016 by Tunde Kehinde and Ercin Eksin (the ACE duo who previously worked at Jumia), the company targets MSMEs across sectors including farming, hospitality, logistics, retail, real estate, technology, and health. Since launch it claims to have made over 1,500 business loans. Lidya was recently accepted into the MasterCard Start Path Programme. The company previously raised a $1.25M seed round in March 2017 and has now completed a $6.9M Series A. The new funding is earmarked to expand the loan book, scale operations in Nigeria, enter new African markets, and hire data scientists and engineers. Lidya is a fintech platform operating in Nigeria that leverages credit algorithms to allow small companies to build a credit score and access loans. The platform evaluates customers and can deliver qualified loans in as little as 48 hours based on risk and capacity. Co‑founded by Tunde Kehinde and Ercin Eksin, Lidya has registered 20,000 businesses on its service. It has financed firms across agriculture, consumer goods, services, and the creative industries. The company is targeting ₦1.5 billion in loan originations to SMEs in Nigeria in its first year of operations. Lidya plans to use recent funding to accelerate product development and grow its team.

Participated · Series D · Aug 2019

Bboxx Africa Ltd., operating under the PEG brand in West Africa, supplies households with access to clean and reliable energy. As of the March 2019 investment, the company had reached more than 60,000 predominantly rural, low-income households, equating to roughly 300,000 beneficiaries. With fresh working-capital support, it intends to extend service to an additional 200,000 households over the subsequent four years. The firm is executing a Gender Action Plan, launched in 2017, that promotes gender-sensitive hiring, flexible working hours and paternity-leave uptake. Its expansion strategy spans Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal, markets that require local-currency financing to scale effectively. Financially, Bboxx Africa obtained a $15.49 million local-currency debt facility from British International Investment (BII) to fuel this growth. The transaction is fully qualified under the G7 2X Challenge, underscoring a focus on empowering women. This capital positions the company to deepen market penetration while maintaining a strong social-impact mandate across West Africa.