Investor Updates: April 21 2022 - EM-focused Tofino Capital closes first round of $10M fund.

EM-focused Tofino Capital closes first round of $10M fund

Highlights

• Tofino Capital has launched its $10 million Fund and has announced the first close of this fund at $5 million, with a goal to reach the final close in nine months.
• Founded by Eliot Pence and Aubrey Hruby, Tofino Capital invests in early-stage companies in venture scalable markets, faced with a lack or inadequate venture capital.
• With the current fund, Tofino Capital seeks to back startups in emerging markets across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, including countries such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, and Mexico.

Source: TechEconomy

Our Takeaway

An increasing number of small- to medium-sized funds with $10 million to $50 million of capital to deploy are targeting opportunities in Africa and other frontier markets. Uncovered Fund, LoftyInc Capital, Savannah Fund, and Ventures Platform are some of such Africa-focused firms that have launched in the past year. The Tofino fund will focus on B2B-focused startups in fintech, logistics, and marketplace themes. Between $50,000 and $500,000 will be invested in these early-stage companies, particularly pre-seed and seed stages.

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Egyptian payments startup Paymob expands to Pakistan

Highlights

• Egyptian digital payments provider Paymob has expanded its operations into Pakistan, aiming to empower Pakistani merchants with online, POS, and “Tap on Phone” payment solutions.
• Founded in 2015, Paymob is an infrastructure technology enabler providing payment solutions to empower digital financial service providers through mobile wallet technology.
• Paymob closed $18.5 million in a Series A funding round last year and has now launched in Pakistan following rapid growth in its home market, Jordan and Kenya. It services tens of thousands of merchants including LG, Samsonite, Talabat, Uber, and Virgin Records, plus SMEs.

Source: Zawya

Our Takeaway

Over the past few years, a growing crop of startups and their founders have made growth-focused, strategic expansions beyond Africa to emerging markets elsewhere—particularly Asia and Latin America. For Paymob, the market opportunity in Pakistan is significant: there are over 4 million SMEs using just over 80,000 POS terminals and less than 3,000 e-commerce payment gateways. The market gap thus fits its solutions.

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Women entrepreneurs join Africa’s fintech boom

Highlights

• Since pioneering mobile money services in the late 2000s, Africa has become a hotbed for financial technology innovation with an explosion of startups vying to tap the region’s unbanked millions.
• Last year, fintech companies attracted more than 60% of the nearly $5 billion in investments to African startups, according to Briter Bridges.
• From digital payments, loans, and insurance to share trading and cryptocurrency, a growing number of female entrepreneurs in countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Egypt are taking a lead in Africa’s male-dominated fintech revolution.

Source: Ventureburn

Our Takeaway

In Africa, female entrepreneurs are taking their place in the male-dominated fintech boom. However, gender bias still makes it harder for them to access finance and grow their businesses. Per Briter Bridges, only 3% of the total funding raised by startups in Africa since 2013 has gone to all-women co-founded teams. Collective stakeholder efforts are crucial to increasing female representation in the startup space, which remains minute against a faster-growing percentage of ventures run by men.