Ventures Platform, a pan-African early-stage venture capital firm, has added four new African firms to its portfolio.
The agency announced on its blog this afternoon that it has invested in the four firms through its most recent $40 million fund.
Kola Aina, the company’s founder, said in a replier dated sometime in December about the establishment of a new $40 million fund aimed at “discovering, developing, and promoting revolutionary market-creating innovation alternatives to build prosperity and position Africa as a formidable power in worldwide markets.”
The Nigerian Sovereign Funding Authority (NSIA) is leading the fund, which includes, VFD Group, UAC Nigeria, Paystack CEO Shola Akinlade, Gbenga Oyebode, and overseas investors such as Enhance VC founder Adam Draper and Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel.
Ventures Platform has sponsored approximately 70 startups since its inception in 2016, including Seamless HR, Mono, Piggyvest and Paystack.
This year, the agency has taken part in at least two investments, including Earnipay’s $4 million seed round and Remedial Health’s $1 million pre-seed round.
Catlog, Fluna, Topup Mama and Shekel are four new firms that have joined the agency’s portfolio, three of which are from Nigeria and one from Kenya.
Topup Mama
The platform is a Kenyan-based restaurant management technology that aims to unite and optimize Africa’s fragmented food and beverage supply chain.
Topup Mama was chosen by Ventures Platform because the entrepreneur had a profound understanding of the problem, having grown up as the son of a restaurant owner and seeing the day-to-day problems and restrictions to growth.
“The founders are ideally positioned to disrupt this billion-dollar market,” according to a blog post on the company’s website.
Fluna
This B2B SaaS treasury management and financing platform was picked because the agency believes the creators are “leading the charge to close the $5 trillion total credit score hole in developing and emerging nations.”
Fluna’s product offerings include automated treasury analysis, money stream projection, and multi-bank information feed, which will be available in 2021.
Shekel
Shekel received Ventures Platform’s support because of its goal of redefining the city mobility sector.
The company is a dealership management system that allows auto shops to get financing, allowing more Africans to own cars.
Shekel, which was founded in 2021, is now active in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United States, with over $6 million in transactions reported.
Catlog
A social commerce platform that enables shops on social networking platforms to reach enormous audiences using cutting-edge sales and marketing tools.
“We believe that social commerce will be a strong candidate for the dominant type of ecommerce in Africa’s highly dynamic marketplaces, and Catlog is well-positioned to provide hundreds of thousands of small business owners with significant financial opportunities.” The agency added, “Retailers can start a free retailer right here.”
Although neither the startups nor Ventures Platform has disclosed the amount of money spent in each, the agency did admit that it had previously quietly invested in six different startups through its most recent fund.
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