Hello Q2, April and Easter!
It’s Friday again in a new month, a new quarter and a short holiday period.
Here’s what transpired in the venture capital space in the last week of last month.
Two Major African Fund Launches
- Impact investor, Goodwell Investments, and Oxfam Novib, a Dutch foundation and Oxfam International affiliate, set up Pepea, a €20 million ( $21.7M) fund, to provide financing to early-stage startups in Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia.
Pepea will target early-stage businesses that have existed one to five years, and are generating revenues but have yet to raise capital. The fund will provide an initial check of between $100k and $500k and follow-on investments of up to $1M from Goodwell’s funds.
- DFS Lab announced the launch of the DFS Lab Stellar Africa Fund I which will back high-potential builders and teams in Africa aiming to transform the digital payments landscape and beyond by building on the Stellar network.
Portfolio founders selected for investment by the fund will have access to DFS Lab’s team, community, and mentors from the Stellar Development Foundation and Stellar ecosystem companies.
African Fintech, Payday, Raises $3 M Seed Funding Round
Payday, a neo bank issuing global (USD, EUR & GBP) accounts to Africans, has raised $3M in seed funding that it plans to use to fuel its future of work initiative through borderless payment alternatives in major currencies.
Payday facilitates sending and receiving of money globally from Africa by enabling payments between foreign employers and clients. The company also issues visual Mastercards and enables people to pay tuition and other fees in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
The oversubscribed seed investment was led by Moniepoint Inc. (formerly TeamApt Inc).
Deal Street Roundup
- Fez Delivery, a Lagos-based last-mile logistics start-up with hubs across Nigeria, raised $1M in a round led by the pan-African investor, Ventures Platform with participation from Voltron Capital, Acasia Ventures and other angel investors.
- Nigeria’s HouseAfrica, a prop-tech start-up providing real estate digitalization and transparency tools to property developers and their customers, raised $400k in funding.
See you next Friday!
Source: weetracker.com
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