Investor Updates: April 19 2022

The Food Lab raises $4.5m pre-seed round

Highlights

• The Food Lab’s, an Egypt-based cloud kitchen operator has raised $4.5 million in a pre-seed round, co-led by Nuwa Capital, Shorooq Partners, and 4DX Ventures.
• Founded in 2020 by Kareem El Daly, Ahmed Osman, and Wesam Masoud, The Food Lab offers shared kitchen spaces to brick and mortar restaurants alongside a technology platform that provides end-to-end services including procurement, cooking, delivery, and marketing.
• It currently works with over 50 local and international brands. With The Food Lab, existing restaurant owners can grow exponentially, while new brands can go from concept to launch within just 10 days.

Source: TechCrunch

Our Takeaway

The restaurant industry across Egypt has witnessed robust growth with an estimated size of $17 billion annually while Egyptians reportedly spend about 30% of their income on food. The adoption of new technologies, like the TFL platform, should allow restaurateurs to scale growth rapidly.

---

Nigeria’s ETAP gets $1.5m to boost car insurance uptake

Highlights

• ETAP, a startup that makes it easier to buy and claim insurance, has secured $1.5 million in pre-seed funding to grow its team and drive the adoption of car insurance across Africa.
• Starting in Nigeria, ETAP will leverage the new funding to roll out its app which allows drivers to buy insurance in 90 seconds, complete claims in 3 minutes, and get rewarded for good driving and avoiding accidents.
• This round was led by Mobility 54 (the Venture Capital arm of Toyota Tsusho and CFAO Group), with participation from Tangerine Insurance, Graph Ventures, Newmont, and other angel investors.

Source: TechCrunch

Our Takeaway

Africa has an ever-growing need for innovative insurance solutions to address the significant lack of coverage on the continent. As of 2018, the insurance penetration rate in Africa stood at a meager 1.12% or 3% with South Africa. Since launching in beta in November 2021, ETAP has insured more than 130,000 individual trips and over 500,000 kilometers of car journeys.

---

BGFA provides Oolu with $2.5m to power rural Burkina Faso

Highlights

• Oolu has signed an agreement with the Beyond the Grid Fund for Africa (BGFA) to support the scale-up of high-quality solar home systems for people living in rural areas of Burkina Faso.
• Launched in 2015, Oolu aims to provide affordable energy access to rural and peri-urban customers in West Africa. So far, it has sold thousands of solar home systems to customers across 6 markets.
• The Burkina Faso subsidiary of Oolu was established in 2018 and will now scale its operations there in partnership with BGFA, a facility that aims to kick-start markets for clean, off-grid energy in African countries.

Source: Afrik21

Our Takeaway

The total value of the BGFA contract is $2.7 million, with a total project budget of at least $5.4 million. With the support of BGFA, Oolu will scale up its current business activities in Burkina Faso, aiming to establish over 28,000 additional subscriptions over a four-year period by providing solar home systems for lighting, and mobile phone charging, TVs, fridges, and freezers as well as power sources for commercial customers.