Another Friday, another recap of last week’s funding!
Here’s what happened in the venture capital space between May 15 & 19, 2023.
Kenya’s M-KOPA Secures $250M+ Debt, Equity Funding
Last week, Kenyan company, M-Kopa, recorded the highest funding round – a $250m equity and debt round. The capital injection includes $55m in equity and over $200m in debt. M-Kopa has now raised $500m+ since its inception in 2011.
Japanese-based trading house, Sumitomo Corporation, led the growth equity capital, donating the lion’s share of $36.5m. Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank in terms of assets, provided half of the $200 M+ “sustainability-linked” debt financing. Development financial institutions – the IFC, FMO, and BII and funds managed by Lion’s Head Global Partners, Mirova SunFunder, and Nithio – supplied the rest.
The company, which is present in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and Ghana, also intends to extend its financial services offerings and product sets as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Kenya and Uganda, where its solar product is more prominent.
Nigerian E-Commerce Start-up, Sabi, Raises $38M Series B Round
Sabi, a Lagos-based B2B e-commerce start-up providing digital commerce infrastructure to Africa’s informal economy, raised $38m in Series B funding at a valuation of $300m.
Sabi uses offline agents, call centres, merchant partners and supplier centres (with access to tools including inventory management, sales, tracking, digital invoices and analytics) as channels to meet the various stakeholders in this value chain.
The company has operations in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa and claims to have facilitated over $100m on behalf of local microfinance banks and fintech lenders. Sabi also claims to record 15,000 monthly orders and experience over 20% month-on-month growth.
Deal Street Wrap-Up
- Jia, a blockchain-based fintech providing loans to micro and small businesses in emerging markets, raised $4.3m seed funding, and an additional $1m commitment for on-chain liquidity, in a round led by early-stage backer, TCG Crypto.
- Figorr, a Nigerian-based cold chain start-up raised $1.5m seed funding in a round led by Atlantica Ventures, with participation from VestedWorld, Jaza Rift Ventures, and Katapult VC.
- South African cybersecurity start-up, Port443, secured an undisclosed amount of funding from technology investment firm Iziko2.0, with supporting funding from RMB Ventures to help it expand its reach further into Africa and the Middle East.
- Morocco-based B2B e-commerce platform, Chari, secured a second round of undisclosed investment from Plug and Play.
That’s a wrap.
Until Friday next week.
Source: weetracker.com
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