Investor Updates: Egypt’s Paymob raises $50m Series B round

🇪🇬Egypt’s Paymob raises $50m Series B round

Highlights

• Egypt-based fintech Paymob has raised $50 million in Series B funding, led by Kora Capital, PayPal Ventures, and Clay Point.
• Founded in 2015 by Islam Shawky, Alain El Hajj, and Mostafa El Menessy, Paymob provides online and offline merchants with digital payment solutions.
• The new funding will be used to help the company to expand its product range, enhance its presence in the Egyptian market, and expand into new markets across the Middle East and Africa region.

Source: TechCrunch

Our Takeaway

Egypt’s huge, cash-dominated small business economy offers strong opportunities for fintech companies like Paymob, which continue to witness exponential growth in the market. The startup currently has 100,000 local and international merchants using its payment gateways and plans to reach a third of Egypt’s 3 million SMEs in the next few years. That mission will be powered by its most recent fundraising round, which is the largest ever fintech Series B in the country and brings the total funding of Paymob to over $68.5 million – making it one of the most funded companies in the region.

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🌍 North Africa-focused edtech Manara gets $3m

Highlights

• Edtech startup, Manara, has raised $3 million in pre-seed funding for its cohort-based training ­­platform geared toward growing the tech talent pool in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
• Manara offers training in computer science to any qualified individual. Its students do not pay any tuition fees but are required to commit 10% of their salary in their first two years of employment to Manara.
• The startup, founded last year, claims its alumni have so far been deployed to big tech companies like Meta and Google across Europe and the U.S.

Source: TechCrunch

Our Takeaway

In Africa, the dearth of talent for digital roles has resulted in a war that sees big companies able to offer fat paychecks and poach prized human assets from smaller counterparts. The shortage of tech talent is not a new problem and may not be resolved anytime soon with the demand for software engineers expected to grow as the technology industry expands. Efforts are needed to plug this gap, and players like Manara are pivotal to expanding the continent’s tech talent pool.

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🇿🇦SA HR startup Radar acquired by Firepay

Highlights

• South African HR and payroll startup Radar has been acquired by Firepay, the company behind SnapScan and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Standard Bank.
• This is the second startup exit for founders Kobus Ehlers and Gerrit Greeff, who have spent more than a decade building various payment products for and with banks.
• The acquisition will see the Radar founders exit the business, while the rest of the team will join Firepay. There will be no immediate changes for existing Radar customers or the products on offer.

Source: Disrupt Africa

Our Takeaway

Africa’s tech ecosystem has over the years attracted a lot of venture capital but failed to produce a lot of exits to justify the funding. However, mergers and acquisitions involving African startups have become prominent over the past year, with at least 20 deals recorded this year, indicating a maturing ecosystem. For this deal, the acquisition of Radar opens Firepay to a big market opportunity considering the growing appetite for enterprise software solutions among large organisations in Africa.