Investor update: Visa, Mastercard back Nigeria’s Aruwa Capital $20m fund

Visa, Mastercard back Nigeria’s Aruwa Capital $20m fund

Highlights

• Visa Foundation and Mastercard Foundation Africa Growth Fund invested in the first institutional fundraising by Nigerian equity and gender-focused firm Aruwa Capital Management.
• The two firms helped raise more than $20 million for the Nigerian company to invest in women-led enterprises facing capital challenges on the continent. Others who contributed to the funding include closely held Nyala Venture and family businesses from Africa, Europe, and the US.
• Founded in 2019 by Adesuwa Okunbo, an ex-investment banker at JPMorgan Chase Co., Aruwa plans to invest $500,000 to $2.5 million in women-focused small and growing businesses in Nigeria and Ghana.

Source: Bloomberg

Our Takeaway

Africa’s female entrepreneurs and startups have been under-represented in access to capital in Africa. Out of 300 companies that raised $3.5 billion in venture capital in the six months through June, only 27% were led by female founders or have at least one female founder, according to a report by the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association. Aruwa has made six investments and committed more than 45% of its capital to firms that met its investment criteria.

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Kenyan social commerce startup Kapu bags $8m seed

Highlights

• Kapu, a Kenyan-based social commerce startup, has raised $8 million in seed funding and come out of stealth, hoping to ease the buying process for Kenyan consumers as food prices increase.
• Founded by Sam Chappatte, a former executive VP at Jumia, Kapu has been building a business-to-customer e-commerce service that allows consumers to buy food at a subsidized rate through online and offline channels.
• With this latest funding, Kapu is set to expand its network of local agents with whom consumers can place orders and support WhatsApp orders to make the process even easier for consumers.

Source: TechCrunch

Our Takeaway

E-commerce is gradually evolving to become social selling in Africa. Across the continent, startups are springing up with different e-commerce business models built around social networking and messaging sites like Facebook and WhatsApp that consumers already use. Facebook and Instagram are used for online shopping more than e-commerce marketplaces by Africans, per a 2019 GeoPoll survey. This emerging social commerce sub-sector is set to witness exponential growth in the coming years as more startups emerge and consumers make purchases via social media platforms.

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Egypt-based OneOrder raises $3m to drive growth

Highlights

• OneOrder, an Egypt-based B2B marketplace that connects restaurants to suppliers, has raised a $3 million seed round led by Nclude as well as returning investor A15, bringing its total funding raised to $10.5 million.
• Founded by Tamer Amer and Karim Maurice, OneOrder works to enable restaurants to source food and their daily procurement needs directly from local suppliers.
• The startup plans to use the investment to bolster its operations by growing its warehouse footprint to gain further market share as well as invest in its proprietary technology.

Source: Wamda

Our Takeaway

Africa’s restaurants and food businesses feed 700 million people across the continent daily. However, these businesses reportedly lose $100 billion annually due to expensive and unreliable supply, limited access to data to inform procurement decisions, wastage and theft, and limited access to capital to fund procurement. Therein lies the opportunity for restaurant-focused SaaS startups like OneOrder, and the market opportunity in Egypt and the MENA region is particularly huge as the economy grows rapidly.