Participated · Seed · Nov 2023

Solfium offers a unified clean-energy platform that integrates solar generation with energy management systems, battery storage, electric vehicle chargers, and predictive maintenance while connecting suppliers, distributors, employees, and corporate facilities. The company reports that since 2022 it has installed 36,260 solar panels, adding 25 MW of capacity and projected to reduce 281,000 tons of CO2 over 25 years while delivering roughly USD 28 million in savings to customers and electricity consumers. Solfium’s leadership emphasizes enabling access to clean energy for both large corporates and more than five million MSMEs in Mexico, with ambitions to expand further across Latin America. The company closed a $10 million Series A to strengthen its technology stack and accelerate market expansion, with strategic investor support from BDC Capital and LATAM Impact Fund aimed at validating impact and scaling operations. CEO and cofounder Andrés Friedman has highlighted customer energy-cost reductions of up to 95% as a key value proposition. Solfium is headquartered in Montreal and is using its platform and new capital to deepen presence in Mexico and grow distributed solar deployment.

Participated · Seed · May 2023

Amini aggregates satellite data with sensors, research and ground-truthing to deliver environmental insights on biodiversity, soil and crop health and to track farming practices such as water and fertilizer use. Its platform enables real-time monitoring tools and machine-learning models for use cases including flood detection and supply-chain transparency. Amini can provide historical environmental data up to 20 years and counts enterprise clients in agriculture and insurance, including Aon. The company is targeting food and beverage and consumer packaged goods firms to help multinationals transform supply chains toward regenerative practices amid new U.S. and European disclosure regulations. Founder and CEO Kate Kallot, who previously held tech roles at Nvidia and Intel, says Amini aims to be a pure platform play that empowers developers to build solutions for African communities. The startup plans to scale data access and transparency to increase economic inclusion for farmers and rebalance value in commodity supply chains. Amini has built a data aggregation platform that ingests satellites, weather feeds, sensors and customer data and unifies it down to a square meter before delivering processed outputs via APIs. The platform can provide nearly 20 years of historical data and current updates produced every two weeks, and can surface granular farm-level metrics (planting-to-harvest cycles, water and fertilizer use) as well as continent-scale insights on flooding, drought and natural disasters. Its primary customers today are corporations and multinationals in agricultural insurance and last-mile supply chain monitoring, with the company in discussions with major food & beverage firms and a large global insurance company. Amini says its product is designed to be highly scalable and to allow reuse of agricultural datasets across insurance, supply-chain and government buyers. The startup was accepted into the Seraphim Space Accelerator and positions itself as a lower-cost alternative to some satellite data providers. Leadership includes founder and CEO Kate Kallot, who has prior AI and deep-tech experience at Arm, Intel and Nvidia, and an executive team with backgrounds at Microsoft, NASA and MTN. The company operates a long sales cycle: international clients receive API access after paying a flat multi-million-dollar two-year license, while local clients are offered tiered introductory pricing.

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.

Participated · Seed · Jun 2022

Thepeer is an API-first infrastructure startup that enables fintechs and businesses to move money between siloed mobile wallets via products embedded in apps and websites. It launched Send as its first product and has since added Direct Charge and Checkout, integrating with customers like Eversend, Nguvu Health and wallets such as Bitsika, Chipper Cash and Paga. A partnership with Flutterwave helped extend its reach and integration footprint. The one-year-old company reports an average month-on-month transaction growth of 161% since launch and says its monthly transaction volume has grown over 65x to “eight-figure” million dollars. Thepeer positions itself at the intersection of data and finance, powering B2B2C flows and wallet interoperability for primarily fintech customers. The founders plan to roll out more functionalities and support wallets in other currencies (the current platform deals with Naira wallets), while hiring talent and investing in product development.

Participated · Seed · Jun 2022

Afropolitan is a community-as-a-service startup that connects the African diaspora through events, travel, media and online community-building. Founded in 2016 by Eche Emole and Chika Uwazie, the company grew its audience via events and social audio (50,000 Clubhouse followers) and the founders’ combined following of over 200,000. Its core product vision is a phased “internet country” built with community tools including passport NFTs, a DAO and a super app offering remittances, e-residency, incorporation services and learn-to-earn initiatives. The company plans to mint 10,000 passport NFTs to activate its DAO and grant members access to events and physical spaces. Later phases target building seed institutions, subsidiary funds and negotiating for physical land to pursue sovereignty. Afropolitan has raised $2.1M in pre-seed to kick-start product development and community growth.