Participated · Seed · Jan 2025

Cauridor builds cross-border payment infrastructure to facilitate financial flows across markets. The company is led by CEO and co-founder Oumar Barry. Following Proparco's $2 million investment as part of its Series A, Cauridor plans to deepen its infrastructure and expand into new markets. Proparco described the deal as supporting financial inclusion, digital transformation and private sector development in emerging economies. Cauridor said the investor's support brings not only capital but also networks, expertise and long-term conviction. The articles do not provide revenue, user metrics, founding year, location, or valuation information.

Participated · Series A · Jul 2024

Protexxa offers an AI-powered platform, Protexxa Defender, that rapidly identifies, evaluates, predicts, and resolves common cyber issues by linking individual cyber hygiene to organizational risk. The platform gives employees and organizations a cyber health score, surfaces exposed passwords and online images, and delivers personalized training and consulting. Protexxa also provides tailored incident response plans to help teams recover faster after attacks. The company intends to use the new capital to fund engineering and data science work on the platform and to grow sales and marketing teams as it expands into global markets. Management is targeting the United States as its next major opportunity and is already seeing demand from financial, telecommunications, and healthcare institutions. To date Protexxa has raised $15 million in venture funding and is led by founder and CEO Claudette McGowan. Protexxa is a B2B SaaS cybersecurity startup that uses artificial intelligence to rapidly identify, evaluate, predict, and resolve common cyber issues by linking personal cyber hygiene to organizational risk. Its personalized cybersecurity protection platform includes assisted remediation, personalized training, assessment, and awareness plans and is being piloted across government, academia, and healthcare. The company emphasizes prevention and increasing global cyber literacy and also offers consulting services for companies worldwide. Protexxa was founded and is led by Claudette McGowan, former Global Executive Officer for Cybersecurity at TD Bank, and maintains an Advisory Circle of notable executives. The company recently launched at an intimate event, is in the process of filing several patents, and reports that 70% of its investors are women. Protexxa raised CAD$4 million in seed funding to build out the platform, facilitate pilots with global customers, and prepare to scale operations.

Led · Seed · Dec 2023

Woveo has developed a digital community wallet that leverages group rotating savings to help members improve financial well-being through credit building and short-term credit access. The platform targets non-prime and underserved banking customers and has worked with 23 communities, serving 18,000 members to date. Woveo reports a 100 percent repayment rate for its rotating savings model. The company was founded in 2020 and has raised $3.8 million to date. Management says recent regulatory changes lowering maximum allowable interest rates and Bank of Canada rate hikes have created opportunities for alternative credit solutions. Woveo plans to use new funding to accelerate customer acquisition and enhance its product offering while continuing to innovate in community banking.

Led · Equity · Feb 2023

Treepz is a Nigerian-based mobility startup offering vehicle rental services for businesses and commuter transport solutions across African markets. Over the past year the company expanded into Uganda, Ghana and now Kenya, where it operates in Nairobi and Mombasa. Treepz raised an additional $1.2 million through strategic investment deals over the last 12 months to support the expansion. Investors in the funding round included GIIG Africa Fund, MoAngels, Roselake VC, Unpopular VC, Goodwater Capital and BKR Capital. Follow-on investments came from existing backers ShockVentures, Winston Limited, Aston Investments and Novum Actus. Treepz has signed corporate and institutional customers such as Twiga Foods, Abacus Schools, OAK House School and Diamond Trust Bank, and appointed Samar Patel as Kenya country manager to drive local growth. Treepz operates three core verticals: Daily Treepz (intracity fixed-route rides with seat reservations and a digital wallet), Travel Treepz (intercity bus aggregation), and corporate bookings. The company has expanded by acquiring operators, including Ghana’s Stabus and Uganda’s Ugabus, the latter giving Treepz access to ~70% of Uganda’s bus operators and around 50,000 customers. Intracity trips are the majority of usage, with customers spending an average of $2–$3 per day. Treepz says its technology functions as an inventory and operations-management system for bus operators, positioning it as a tech partner to drive growth. The company plans to consolidate positions in West and East Africa next year, targeting expansions into Tanzania, Burundi and Ethiopia from its Nigerian base. Treepz has also received strategic capital from Google’s African Investment Fund to support aggressive expansion of its ride-sharing and intercity ticketing services. Plentywaka operates a mobile app connecting users to more than 900 vehicles (cars, vans and buses) through intrastate (Dailywaka) and interstate (Travelwaka) services. Since going live in September 2019 the company says it has acquired over 80,000 users and completed up to half a million rides. The startup has set up its headquarters in Canada while maintaining operations in Nigeria across 21 cities. As part of regional expansion it fully acquired Ghanaian mobility startup Stabus and rebranded it Plentywaka Ghana, bringing an additional 12,000 users and a track record of moving over 100,000 people in Accra. Some of the former Stabus customers include multinationals MTN and GB Foods. Plentywaka plans to launch in Accra on September 16 and aims to replicate expansion in six other African countries within 24 months while raising a Series A to fund that growth. Plentywaka is a bus-booking startup that launched in Lagos in September 2019 and provides scheduled commuter bus services. Since launch it has completed over 100,000 rides across seven routes and amassed more than 40,000 customers. The company is expanding to Abuja, where it plans to launch five routes and offer a week of free travel at launch. Plentywaka raised $300,000 in a pre-seed round to fund that expansion and broader growth. The funding will be used to improve mapping technology on Android and iOS, enhance customer experience, introduce better payment options, and expand into other Nigerian states. The company also operates Staff Bus Solutions and a same-day delivery offering, Logistics by Plentywaka, and is a subsidiary of the newly renamed EMFATO Holdings (formerly CrowdyVest Holdings).