Participated · Equity · Mar 2024

Simera Sense is a Leuven, Belgium-based provider of end-to-end optical solutions and high-resolution, off-the-shelf cameras for the global small-satellite Earth observation market. Led by CEO Johann Du Toit, the company's cameras are used by diverse clients across a wide range of industries. Simera Sense collaborates with various European institutions and partners with other companies on New Space opportunities. A key technical focus is integrating on-board data processing embedded in the camera control electronics, which the company says would be a market first compared with typical ground-based processing. The firm plans to use the €13.5M in growth funding to further develop its product range, increase production capacity, and accelerate on-board processing capabilities. These efforts are intended to expand its product offerings and address bandwidth and communication challenges associated with ground-based data processing.

Participated · Seed · Dec 2023

Coachbetter develops a platform aimed at replacing manual, analog club processes—like spreadsheets and WhatsApp coordination—with a central operating system for youth and amateur soccer clubs. Its product focuses on simplifying administrative processes, centralizing communication between coaches, parents and officials, and digitally organizing training and match operations. The company positions the platform to reduce background operational complexity so clubs can focus more on training and development. With the newly raised $8.2M Pre-Series A, Coachbetter plans to expand its engineering and product teams and further enhance platform capabilities. It also intends to work more closely with professional organizations such as City Football Group and Borussia Dortmund and to scale into additional markets and club structures. The involvement of both venture investors and soccer personalities is presented as a signal of growing market importance and operational proximity to customers.

Led · 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.

Led · Series A · Aug 2022

DataProphet offers end-to-end prescriptive AI for manufacturing, with PRESCRIBE delivering prescriptive advice and CONNECT enabling data collation and centralization. PRESCRIBE has helped clients reduce the cost of non-quality by an average of 40% when its recommendations are followed. The platform ingests about 100 million unique data points daily and integrates low-level factory data to drive optimization. The 50-person team serves clients in automotive, semiconductor, rubber and foundry sectors across Japan, China, India, Europe, South Africa, the U.S., and South America. DataProphet uses a hands-on approach, continuously monitoring data streams and pushing actionable feedback to the factory floor while engaging customers when advice is not followed. The company plans to invest in its industrial AI product set and support international sales expansion, including developing European and U.S. sales offices. DataProphet builds PRESCRIBE, a prescriptive Expert Execution system powered by AI that automates the next best action for machine operators to accelerate the journey toward autonomous manufacturing. PRESCRIBE guides operators to change process parameters, preempt defects and scraps, and maximize yield across multiple manufacturing verticals including iron foundries, aluminum die casters, long steel and aluminum rolling mills, plastic injection molding, and mineral processing. The company says its system uncovers complex interdependencies and delivers performance uplifts that exceed classical approaches, enabling manufacturers to automate actions without constant reliance on experts or data scientists. DataProphet has received multiple international recognitions, including Frost & Sullivan's 2020 Technology Innovation Leadership Award, World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer (2019), the AIconics Award for Innovation in Deep Learning, and CBInsights' 100 Most Innovative AI Startups 2020. With a recently announced $6 million capital investment, DataProphet aims to continue pioneering AI in manufacturing and to guide customers on their journey toward autonomous operations. DataProphet, founded in 2014 by Frans Cronje and Daniel Schwartzkopff, develops machine-learning solutions to help manufacturers develop products and optimize processes. The company has worked with automotive assemblies, including Daimler, and was the overall winner of the Mercedes‑Benz Innovation Challenge. DataProphet secured a “multi‑million dollar” funding round from Knife Capital; the exact amount was not disclosed. Prior to this deal the startup had raised funding from private investment group Yellowwoods. Management says the new funding will finance further product development and will be directed mainly toward expansion into the US and the EU, with particular emphasis on Germany as a target market. Co‑founder and MD Frans Cronje led discussions with Knife Capital, which began in the second half of last year. DataProphet is a Cape Town-based machine learning startup that custom-builds AI solutions for enterprises, including an Agent Lead Matching Algorithm (US patent pending), Priority Lead Identification, Time Allocation and Fraud Detection algorithms. Founded in 2013, the company works with clients across industries and with small businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area. As part of its product roadmap it is developing automated support-agent solutions that integrate with WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to avoid requiring users to download apps. The firm emphasises actionable AI that improves business processes and is positioning to expand globally. DataProphet says recent investment has given it freedom to invest in additional resources and machines to scale its offerings.

Led · Series A · Nov 2021

VoxCroft Analytics provides open-source intelligence and risk analytics services combining AI-driven tools, proprietary machine translation, data science, and human analysts to surface actionable insights. The company serves public and private sector clients to help anticipate and respond to emerging risks. It has offices in South Africa and the United States and a global team of more than 100 people across 13 countries. VoxCroft raised close to $2 million in Series A funding from Knife Capital to accelerate US and international expansion. Knife Capital emphasized the company’s technology, team, and depth of insights when making the investment. The funding is intended to facilitate strategic decisions and propel the company’s growth and market expansion plans.