Participated · Series B · Feb 2025

Khazna offers salary advances, payroll-backed credit, pension lending, unsecured loans to gig workers, bill payments, buy-now-pay-later, insurance and a rent-to-own product aimed at low- and middle-income workers. The company focused on payroll and pension-backed lending as its core product, which management says drove it to break even last month. Khazna has grown to over 500,000 users, with about 100,000 receiving their payroll through the platform, enabling embedded lending and insurance. Because it cannot accept customer deposits today, Khazna funds lending with wholesale debt in USD and EGP, which raises its cost of funds. The startup is working to secure a deposit-taking digital banking license in Egypt (targeting mid-2026) to lower funding costs and capture deposits. It also plans to expand into Saudi Arabia and to target 40–50% of business from that market within four years, leveraging large Egypt–Saudi remittance flows. Khazna is a Cairo-based financial super app targeting middle- and lower-income users with a suite of banking and non-financial services. Founded in 2019 by Omar Saleh, Ahmed Wagueeh, Fatma El Shenawy and Omar Salah, its entry product was an earned wage access service (Khazna HR) launched in 2020 that lets partner employers offer cash advances. The company has since added buy now, pay later, bill payments and a prepaid debit card; its BNPL is available in about 1,000 merchant stores. Khazna reports roughly 150,000 users across all products and employs a team of 170, with leadership drawn from WorldRemit, Uber, Jumia and Match Group. The startup is aligned with the Central Bank of Egypt’s financial inclusion and less-cash initiatives and plans to leverage CBE infrastructure such as the instant payment network. Khazna plans to launch additional products before year-end and aims to reach 1 million users by the end of 2022. Financially, the company has raised $38M in this Series A (debt and equity) and $47M in total since inception. Khazna provides convenient, effective and secure smartphone-based financial services. The company was founded in April last year by Omar Saleh, Ahmed Wagueeh, Fatimah El Shenawy, and Omar Salah. Its LinkedIn states the leadership team has over 50 years of combined global experience in finance, corporate strategy and technology. Last month Khazna announced an undisclosed seed investment led by Algebra Ventures and joined by Accion Venture Lab. Ventureburn/Menabytes report that Disruptech, a $25 million fintech fund, also invested a six-figure dollar amount in Khazna; Disruptech did not disclose exact investment sizes.

Participated · Series A · Dec 2023

Respeecher builds voice-model technology that modifies performers’ recorded or live speech—rather than pure text‑to‑speech—to recreate or age voices, change accents, and serve as a “prosthetic” voice for actors. Its clients and projects include recreating James Earl Jones’s Darth Vader, a younger Luke Skywalker for The Mandalorian, work with CD Projekt, and a deal with Warner Music; it also partnered with Calm and recreated a Jimmy Stewart–style voice. The company emphasizes an ethics‑first approach: obtaining consent from rights holders or estates, creating an opt‑in voice library for actors, and joining Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative. Respeecher has expanded into assistive applications, working with hospitals and patients (including laryngectomy cases) to restore a more natural voice for people who lost their ability to speak. The team says it has prioritized slower, responsible growth rather than rapid scaling amid a noisy AI landscape and ongoing conflict in Kyiv. The new funding will be used to add studios and expand services for media and gaming clients. Respeecher is a Kyiv-based AI startup that provides a toolkit to change recorded voices and transfer one person’s voice to another (not in real time). Its core product is voice transformation and voice‑cloning technology used in post-production. The company says content creators already use the tech and that “one of Hollywood’s largest film studios” used it in a global blockbuster. Respeecher plans to expand beyond entertainment into the call‑centre market. Prior to the latest round, the startup raised about $120,000 as part of the Techstars accelerator programme in Philadelphia. The team positions the product as “deepfakes‑for‑good” and highlights its ability to adapt across demand sectors.

Participated · Series C · Sep 2023

O Gringo is an app that simplifies the driver experience by centralizing previously fragmented services for vehicle owners. The platform offers credit products and protections such as assistance and insurance, and helps with tasks like document management. The company plans to launch new solutions this year focused on the vehicle purchase and sale journey. With the recent funding, O Gringo intends to expand into adjacent services including maintenance, fuel (abastecimento), toll (pedágio) and other driver-related offerings. Financially, the startup has accumulated nearly R$500 million in total funding over its five years of market presence. Gringo is a super app for Brazilian drivers that centralizes vehicle documentation, payments (fines, taxes, licensing), insurance contracting and loans using the vehicle as collateral. The app lets drivers manage renewals and documents in one place and compare insurance and bank offers. Gringo plans to expand its automotive credit and insurance products, add new features, and enter the used‑car buy-and-sell market to help drivers choose the best offers. The company intends not to act as a dealership but to use its customer vehicle data to match buyers and sellers. Gringo has grown to 10 million customers and aims to double its revenue over last year by the end of this year; it has raised $80 million in total. Gringo is a startup founded in 2020 that started by offering free monitoring of driver licenses and vehicle debts. The company has grown its user base to five million drivers in under two years, doubling its count since its Series A. In 2021 Gringo expanded into credit and insurance sales, driving a 20x increase in GMV and a 25x increase in revenue versus 2020. Management says the product roadmap focuses on building a "super app" that centralizes services for drivers, with ongoing tests of additional products and services. The company has already closed partnerships to simplify how drivers buy and monitor insurance and credit. Gringo has expanded beyond its São Paulo launch into the South and Southeast regions and plans national rollout and tests in other Latin American markets in 2022. O Gringo is a Brazilian startup that assists drivers across their journey via an app, WhatsApp and social channels, offering vehicle monitoring, document support and automotive content. The company emphasizes a close, personalized relationship with drivers and disruptive features to simplify everyday driving tasks. In one year it has acquired more than 2.5 million users, representing over 10% market share in the state of São Paulo, and reports 94% of users saying they will remain loyal; it also earned the RA1000 badge with a 9.8 rating. The app is currently live in São Paulo, Paraná and Santa Catarina, and the company is expanding to the rest of Brazil. O Gringo was recently selected for Endeavor’s scale-up program and plans to use new capital to develop additional services, strengthen its team and support national expansion.

Participated · Series B · May 2023

Jenfi provides revenue-based financing to online businesses, offering funding from $10,000 to $1 million with flexible repayment plans of three to 12 months. The company was founded in 2019 by Jeffrey Liu and Justin Louie and is based in Singapore. Since inception it has deployed more than $25 million in non-dilutive capital to about 600 companies, whose aggregate sales exceed $150 million. Jenfi differentiates via a proprietary risk assessment engine that integrates with accounting software, payment gateways, e-commerce platforms, marketplaces and advertising channels to continuously monitor borrowers. The firm has implemented a machine learning-assisted underwriting system and is adding local data integrations (including Haravan, KiotViet and most banks in Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia) to improve credit decisions. Future plans include refining underwriting and risk capabilities, working with synthetic data, building a tech platform for third parties to use its scoring models, launching dynamic limits and an on-demand financing product for recurring ad spend. Jenfi provides revenue-based financing of up to $500,000 with flexible, target-based repayment plans and a flat fee, positioning itself as “growth capital as a product.” Founded in 2019 by Jeffrey Liu and Justin Louie, the company focuses on digital-native firms such as SaaS providers and e-commerce sellers and runs a fully online application process that can deliver financing in under 24 hours in some cases. Its proprietary risk assessment engine integrates data from bank accounts, accounting software (Xero, QuickBooks), payment gateways (Stripe, Braintree), e-commerce platforms (Shopify, Shopee, Lazada) and advertising platforms (Facebook Ads, Google Ads). Jenfi reports that the average customer saw compounded sales growth of ~26.5% over three months, 60% over six months and 156% over 12 months; aggregate sales across its portfolio exceed $30 million. The company previously raised $25 million in debt financing from San Francisco-based Arc Labs and aims to deploy $15 million by July 2022. Part of the new funding will be used to build additional integrations and automated analytics and to expand tools and services beyond financing to help portfolio companies grow. Jenfi offers growth-focused financing to small and medium businesses in Southeast Asia, lending directly or issuing a virtual Jenfi Mastercard for purchases. The company funds marketing-driven growth and takes a percentage of future revenue rather than imposing fixed repayment schedules. Jenfi partners with marketing agencies and services to help borrowers optimize alternative marketing channels, while avoiding becoming a direct service provider. Founders Jeffrey Liu and Justin Louie launched the business from a base in Singapore and are positioning marketing growth as their initial product focus. Since launch last year the startup has onboarded 50 borrowers and lent SGD$600,000 to date. Jenfi is currently going through Y Combinator and plans to expand to additional geographies and broaden its product offering over the next two years.

Participated · Seed · Jun 2022

Adwisely, formerly RetargetApp, provides ad automation solutions for e-commerce direct-to-consumer brands across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google. The platform aims to increase efficiency in the ad buying process for growing SMBs and now serves 1,000+ DTC brands in the US and Europe, including KSENIASCHNAIDER, Survival Miami and Sports Fan Island. The company recently launched a growth solution that pairs its automation platform with human expertise for larger or more complex projects. Adwisely plans to use its new funding to integrate with additional advertising platforms. Founded in 2018 and led by CEO and founder Paul Matvienko, the founding team is Ukrainian and the company is based in Wilmington, Delaware.