Participated · Series B · Feb 2023

Smile Identity offers a suite of identity-verification products including face verification, liveness checks, document verification, digital KYC, onboarding, anti-fraud checks and identity-data deduplication. The company launched in 2018 and was founded by Mark Straub and William Bares. It has expanded product coverage from ~250 million identities to capabilities the company says can cover over a billion identities and 230 ID types across 100+ countries via its Document Verification product. Smile Identity processed over 30 million identity verifications in 2021 (about half of its ~50 million total checks since inception) and performs roughly 2–2.5 million monthly checks; it serves over 100 businesses across banking, fintech, education, agriculture and e-commerce. The firm says it doubled its client base since 2021 and tripled revenues over the same period. Growth plans include ramping hiring across East, Southern and West Africa, expanding into Francophone and Arab-speaking countries, opening offices (including London and Cape Town) and partnering with ID authorities and governments to support consent standards and data-protection compliance. Smile Identity builds ID verification and KYC compliance tools tailored to African identities using de-biased face recognition, liveness checks and anti-fraud measures. Founded in 2017 by Mark Straub and William Bares, the company matches selfies against identity documents and photos held by ID authorities. It covers more than 250 million identities, supports over 15 ID types, performs over one million identity checks per month and serves about 80 customers charged on a per-query basis. Customers span banking, fintech, ride-sharing, worker verification, public social welfare programs and telecommunications, including Paystack, Paga, Chipper Cash, Kuda, Umba, Stanbic IBTC, Binance, Luno and Paxful. Smile Identity plans to use new funding to improve its services, expand into more markets, add support for additional ID types, and hire more engineers and support staff across Africa. The company is also building compliance templates and product features to help clients meet evolving local data-protection and consent requirements.

Participated · Seed · Nov 2022

Revio provides an end-to-end order-to-cash payment orchestration platform that connects merchants to more than 70 payment methods and service providers via APIs. Its platform offers transaction routing, automated failover and retries, and real-time customer engagement workflows (email, SMS, WhatsApp, push) to boost payment success rates and support revenue recovery. The company recently added a revenue-recovery use case that re-engages customers with alternative payment options or flexible plans after failed authorizations. Revio has expanded coverage to over 25 African markets and serves roughly 50 customers, focusing on large enterprises and mid-market firms with complex, recurring-revenue payment needs. The startup says revenue grew roughly 1,000% year-over-year and counts several large insurers and telcos among its clients. Revio plans to target global retailers servicing Africa and build cross-border reconciliation and settlement capabilities while expanding its engineering and commercial teams. Revio is an API-first payments and collections platform that aggregates and orchestrates multiple payment methods across Africa, including card, bank transfer, debit order, mobile money, vouchers and QR codes. Its platform connects to providers such as Flutterwave, Paystack, Ozow and Stitch and collects and settles payments in more than 40 markets, offering features like smart payment routing, automated billing, auto-retries and real-time analytics. The startup focuses on reducing payment failures and revenue recovery for recurring-revenue businesses (insurers, telcos, retailers, subscription services, asset leasing and alternative lenders). In over a year of operations Revio has onboarded over 50 clients, processes thousands of transactions monthly, and reports more than 100 clients in the pipeline. Founded in 2020 and based in South Africa, the company plans to expand into roughly 13 African countries over the next 18 months (focusing on three to four large markets) and eventually enter other emerging markets such as Latin America, while expanding its team and product suite.

Participated · Seed · Jun 2022

Founded in 2020 and based in Hawai‘i, PlantBaby creates clean-label, organic food and beverage products tailored to children’s nutritional needs. Its flagship brand, Kiki Milk, offers four shelf-stable plant-based milk blends—Original, Chocolate, Mac Nut, and Unsweetened—made from whole-food ingredients such as oats, bananas, sprouted pumpkin seeds, and Aquamin calcium sourced from red marine algae. The company triple-toxin tests every ingredient and avoids gums, seed oils, synthetic additives, and artificial flavors, earning certifications for organic, non-GMO, glyphosate residue-free, and allergen-friendly status. Distribution channels already include Sprouts, Wegmans, Erewhon, Amazon, Thrive Market, and the company’s own Shopify site, and demand has repeatedly outpaced supply. In 2024 the startup generated $4.8 million in revenue. PlantBaby has raised $7 million to date, including a recent $4 million seed round at a $20 million post-money valuation. Future plans include national retail expansion, a grain-free Kiki Milk blend later this year, and development of the first clean-label plant-based infant formula.

Participated · Seed · Nov 2021

Onepipe operates a suite of solutions including embedded payments, reconciliation services, and an inventory finance product built on its core APIs. The company says its inventory finance solution—which lets distributors pay for goods so merchants can repay after sales—is its fastest-growing service. Onepipe intends to focus on specific embedded finance use cases, particularly inventory finance for FMCG supply chains. The startup plans to leverage the new capital to expand operations and become a leading provider of financial services to Nigeria’s informal sector. The company cites the large informal sector in Africa as a market opportunity for improving financial access and driving economic development. At the same time, Onepipe is reducing headcount by about 20% and implementing management pay cuts to streamline projects and extend runway amid macroeconomic headwinds. OnePipe is a fintech API company that runs infrastructure enabling embedded finance and banking-as-a-service for non-financial businesses and partner banks. The company originally aimed to build an API gateway for open banking but pivoted to embedded finance after integrations showed limited demand cycles. It currently operates with six partner banks and enables customers to issue accounts, process payments and access credit through its APIs. OnePipe monetizes by taking a percentage cut of transactions and at least 1% of loan interest from lending partners, sharing revenue with partner banks and businesses. In the 10 months since the pivot it processed more than 6.3 million transactions worth over $46.3 million across more than 1 million individual accounts and 138+ businesses. The company plans to deploy capital to deepen its embedded finance offering and expand beyond Nigeria via strategic partnerships (notably with Sendy) into other African markets. OnePipe builds a unified gateway that pools APIs from multiple banks and third-party providers under a common specification to simplify integrations for fintechs and businesses. The product aggregates direct bank APIs and third-party APIs (for example, Mono) rather than relying on robotic process engines. Its revenue model is fee-based: partner banks and institutions charge clients for API access and OnePipe takes a cut. The startup was founded in November 2018 by Ope Adeoye, who previously held multiple product and strategy roles at Interswitch. Since joining Techstars in July 2020, OnePipe has signed partnerships with several banks and fintechs (Polaris, SunTrust, Fidelity, Providus, Migo, Flutterwave, Paystack, Quickteller) and plans to onboard seven more banks. The company intends to use its new funding to push a banking-as-a-service play that lets non-financial institutions help partner banks distribute services to the last mile; it has also signed several unnamed manufacturers, retail, agent, and cooperative networks.

Participated · Series A · Jul 2021

Agentero operates a digital insurance network that leverages smart algorithms to combine agents’ existing data with third-party sources to identify new business and cross-sell opportunities. The platform connects agents with carriers in real-time to instantly quote and provides communication and automation tools to help agents write more new business efficiently. Agentero also offers carriers opportunities to integrate into a tech-enabled agent channel via its panel. The company works with more than 800 independent agencies and provides access to homeowners, auto, renters, umbrella, business owners policies (BOP), general and professional liability, workers’ compensation, flood, and life insurance. Founded in 2017 and led by CEO Luis Pino, Agentero is focused on expanding its operations and business reach. It recently raised capital to support that expansion.