• Definely

  Participated · Series A · May 2024

  Definely offers an AI-driven productivity suite to streamline legal drafting and review, with features such as Draft (navigate definitions and clauses without losing place), Vault (insert clauses with one click), Proof (check inconsistencies and broken cross-references) and a PDF extractor for scanned documents. The company launched an agentic AI system called Enhance, which includes AI agents that work with Microsoft Word to collaborate on drafting, reviewing, and proofreading tasks. Founded in 2017 and based in the U.K., Definely reported that the U.S. now accounts for 30% of its revenue. The company raised a $30M Series B and had previously raised a $7M Series A last May. Management says the new capital will be used to expand further into the U.S., invest more in AI, and hire additional employees. The founders launched the product to solve practical contract-navigation problems experienced in law firms, and are positioning the business for global growth. Definely provides a subscription-based suite of productivity solutions designed to assist lawyers at the pre-execution stage of the contract lifecycle. The company is led by CEO and Co-Founder Nnamdi Emelifeonwu. It works with a roster of UK and international customers, including elite law firms and Fortune 500 companies such as A&O Shearman, Slaughter and May, Womble Bond Dickinson, Dentons, Eversheds Sutherland, DLA Piper, Deloitte and Barclays. Definely intends to advance development of AI-driven solutions for the legal industry. To support that work it has secured a £585,000 grant from Innovate UK. The grant follows a strategic investment from Raine Ventures and a Series A funding round in May. Definely provides productivity solutions that assist lawyers at every pre-execution stage of the contract lifecycle, helping customers draft, proof and understand legal documents quickly. The company is led by CEO Nnamdi Emelifeonwu and CSO Feargus MacDaeid and has over 60 employees globally. Definely serves large companies and law firms across Europe, North America, Africa, Australia and Asia. Its customers include Allen & Overy (now A&O Shearman), Eversheds, DLA Piper, Deloitte, Ericsson and Barclays. The company reports an existing base of about 40,000 active users from the largest companies and law firms in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. Following its Series A, Definely intends to use the funds to expand operations and development efforts. Founded in 2017 by Nnamdi Emelifeonwu and Feargus Macdaeid, Definely offers a one-click drafting and contract-review tool that integrates as a toolbar in MS Word so users do not need to switch programmes. The product is described as intuitive and user-friendly, requiring limited training or technical support. The startup reports a 500% year-over-year growth rate in its user base and counts customers including Deloitte, Allen & Overy and Dentons. Definely says it will use the new funding to accelerate product development, expand its team, and drive expansion into markets beyond the UK. The company has previously been selected by Google for Startups as one of 30 companies to receive its inaugural £2 million European Black Founders Fund.

• Sukhiba

  Led · Seed · Oct 2023

  Sukhiba has built a B2B conversational commerce tool that brings end-to-end transactions into WhatsApp, including browsing product catalogs, cart management, checkout and notifications. The platform supports local payment methods such as M-Pesa and offers order management, customer grouping, routing to sales staff and CRM-like monitoring features for manufacturers and distributors. Sukhiba says it has enabled WhatsApp commerce for more than 30 companies, serving close to 15,000 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). The startup originally launched as a community commerce, asset-heavy model and pivoted to conversational commerce to focus on scalable software. Sukhiba is positioned to expand beyond Kenya into other high-WhatsApp-penetration African markets such as Ethiopia, South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria. The company closed a $1.5 million seed round to support that expansion.

• Stitch

  Participated · Series A · Oct 2023

  Stitch is a payments infrastructure company based in Cape Town, South Africa. Its platform helps businesses connect to the financial system, offering online payment methods as a Payments Service Provider and in-person payments at POS, and supports a variety of pay-in methods, payment and financial management solutions, and Payouts. The platform includes fraud prevention through its Shield product, enterprise flexibility and customization, technical and integration client services, 24/7 customer support, and built-in redundancies with automated routing to improve conversion and reliability. Stitch serves South African businesses including Takealot, Mr. D, MTN, Vodacom, Standard Bank’s Shyft, TFG’s Bash, Hollywoodbets, Luno and The Courier Guy. The company raised $55M in Series B funding and intends to use the funds to expand operations and its development efforts. Stitch has raised $107M in total funding to date. Stitch is a Cape Town–based fintech that began emerging from stealth in 2021 and builds end-to-end payments infrastructure and open-banking APIs for enterprises. Its product set includes PayOS (an orchestration and reconciliation dashboard), pay-by-bank, card acceptance, recurring debits, cash/manual bank transfer, and payouts, plus a subsidiary (WigWag) for SMBs to accept link/card payments. The company has expanded from a quasi-data, quasi-bank-to-bank platform into a next-generation payment service provider serving large merchants and startups across Africa. Stitch works with customers including MTN, Multichoice, The Foschini Group, SnapScan and Yoco, and competes with Mono, Okra, Revio and MoneyHash. It is on track to process over 50 million transactions totaling about $2 billion in TPV this year and employs over 80 people. Stitch plans to use its recent funding to continue product development, expand its customer base and geography, and add more first-party payment rails (including direct card and bank rail connections without intermediaries). Stitch builds API infrastructure and an embedded finance platform that lets businesses connect bank and financial accounts to power KYC/onboarding, access transaction and balance data, perform fraud checks, and enable bank-to-bank payments. Its customers include Chipper Cash, Luno, ImaliPay, FlexClub and Yoco, and it serves e-commerce companies, marketplaces, platforms and fintechs. After launching its payments product in South Africa in April 2021, Stitch reported a 50% month-on-month growth in payments volume over the following six months, expanded payments to Nigeria and was on track to facilitate $10 million in monthly payments by December; the company later cited 104% month-on-month growth in payments value since launch, plus Q4 2021 metrics of 44% month-on-month customer growth and a 72% month-on-month increase in linked financial accounts. Stitch aims to create a "financial graph" across Africa to enable interoperability across geographies, providers, banks and accounts so businesses can write once and scale across markets. The company plans to deepen payments, data and identity products, launch new offerings, enter new markets and expand its team across offices in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Lagos. Stitch was co-founded by Kiaan Pillay, Natalie Cuthbert and Priyen Pillay. Stitch builds fintech infrastructure — a Plaid-style data product and a payments/pay-by-bank solution — to let developers and fintechs access identities, accounts, transactions and balances with user consent. The company launched from stealth in early 2021 and initially focused on South Africa before expanding into Nigeria. Stitch has been testing payments in both markets and soft‑launched a pay‑by‑bank feature in South Africa, where it reported more than 50% month‑on‑month growth in customers and payments volume within six months. Clients include Chipper Cash, Paystack, Franc, Sanlam, Yoco and Flexclub. The company says it is on track to facilitate $10 million in monthly payments by the end of the year. Stitch plans to fully launch its data solution by the end of November and expand its team in Lagos for the Nigerian market. Stitch offers developer APIs that let apps connect to users' financial accounts to share transaction history and balances, confirm identities and initiate payments. The company currently sells data and identity API products and plans to add a payments product this month. While in stealth it secured a handful of clients, including Intelligent Debt Management, Momentum Velocity Club and FlexClub. Stitch charges developers per API call and in some cases a fixed fee for products like budgeting or personal finance management. The founding team—Kiaan Pillay (CEO), Natalie Cuthbert (CTO) and Priyen Pillay (CPO)—began working on the idea full-time in October 2019 and raised a pre-seed shortly thereafter. Stitch will use its new funding to consolidate growth in South Africa and plans to launch operations in West and East Africa.

• Sabi

  Participated · Series B · May 2023

  Sabi is a Lagos-based B2B e-commerce startup that provides digital commerce infrastructure to Africa’s informal economy, connecting manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers via an asset-light marketplace and a network of agents, call centers and supplier centers. Its platform offers tools including inventory management, sales tracking, digital invoices and analytics and earns revenue from a 5–6% take rate on marketplace transactions and financing margins on credit it originates. The startup reports growth to more than 300,000 merchants and over a $1 billion annualized GMV, up from 175,000 merchants and a $200 million annualized GMV in late 2021. Sabi processes about 15,000 monthly orders and is experiencing over 20% month-on-month growth, and it has facilitated over $100 million on behalf of local microfinance banks and fintech lenders. Executives emphasize focusing on fundamentals, unit economics and profitability rather than aggressive incentive-led growth, and the company is launching new products to serve agents and last-mile merchants. It operates in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa and plans to expand into Tanzania and Malawi (via acquisition), the DRC and Francophone West Africa. Sabi offers an asset-light B2B retail platform for informal trade, providing online and offline channels—agents, call centres, merchant partners, supplier centres—and a mobile app with inventory, sales, tracking, digital invoices and analytics. The company provides visibility across the value chain without owning vehicles, warehouses or goods, and complements rather than disintermediates existing distributors and middlemen. Sabi monetizes via transaction fees on marketplace sales and earns margins from providing financing to merchants; it plans a subscription reseller model for agents in Q1 2022 and aims to offer manufacturers data-backed visibility. The platform is category-agnostic and supports FMCG and other sectors; it hosts more than 175,000 merchants and over 10,000 agents, with a roughly $200 million annualized GMV run rate and about $12 million monthly GMV. Sabi has grown an average of 40% month-on-month in Nigeria and was spun out of Rensource in October 2020, led by founder and CEO Anu Adasolum and co-founder/director Ademola Adesina. The company has opened operations in Kenya and made hires in South Africa with plans to go live there early next year, and expects a Series A may close to fund that expansion.

• Sava

  Participated · Seed · Jun 2022

  Sava is a spend-management fintech founded by Yoeal Haile, Federico Von Bary Landesmann and Kolawole Olajide that targets cash-flow constrained small and medium businesses across Africa. The platform bundles bank accounts, mobile wallets, payment and accounting integrations to control spending, digitize expense reimbursements and reconcile records while capturing data to support underwriting. Sava plans to issue company cards by converting debit cards to credit cards, offering businesses 30 days of free credit and access to revolving overdrafts or working capital loans. It intends to monetize via interchange fees on card transactions, subscription fees for platform access, interest income from loans and upselling third-party products such as insurance. The product is yet to launch; Sava will beta in South Africa in Q3 and plans a Kenya launch in Q4, with later expansion to Nigeria and Egypt. Competitors cited in the article include Float, Lenco, Boya, Prospa and Brass.

No current team members are available.