Ventures Platform goes bigger — and broader — with its second Africa fund

Подробности

The firm plans to back early-stage founders across a range of sectors, including fintech, healthcare, SaaS, and other areas “where technology can address essential needs and build large, enduring businesses,” Kola Aina, the firm’s founding partner, told TechCrunch.

“We’re particularly interested in where AI changes the economics of serving African markets,” he said, pointing to its potential to reduce the cost of delivering services and help overcome labor shortages. “For us, AI is most interesting when it is not simply a feature, but an enabler of an entirely different cost structure, business model or market.”

Ventures Platform , which is headquartered in Nigeria, previously raised a $46 million Fund I in 2022 with a similar, albeit more limited scope. The first fund focused primarily on pre-seed and seed rounds.

“It allowed us to demonstrate that our approach to early-stage investing in Africa could work at an institutional scale and laid the foundation for Fund II,” Aina said.

The firm is expanding its focus beyond Nigeria and has already written checks from Fund II to five companies based in Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt. Check sizes will be up to $3 million, and the firm hopes to deploy the capital over the next three to four years.