Investors update: November 29 2022

Africa-focused VC LoftyInc closes $14.3m fund

Highlights

• LoftyInc Capital Management, an early-stage African-focused venture capital firm, has reached the final close of its LoftyInc Afropreneurs Fund 3 (LAF3).
• Founded in 2017, LoftyInc is based in Lagos and invests in sectors such as logistics, printing services, commercial services, educational and training services, cybersecurity, ed-tech, fintech, e-health tech, and e-commerce.
• Coming off its first unicorn exit via its LoftyInc Afropreneurs Fund 2 (LAF2) investment in Flutterwave, it launched LAF3 in 2021 as a $10 million fund. However, it closed 40% oversubscribed at $14.2 million. 

Source: Disrupt Africa

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. With the close of the third fund, LoftyInc plans to significantly deepen its focus on investing in the most promising early to growth-stage startups improving African lives with disruptive tech-enabled products and services.

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Cameroonian crypto platform Ejara bags $8m

Highlights

• Ejara, a Cameroonian fintech offering an investment app that allows users to buy crypto and save through decentralized wallets, has raised $8 million in Series A investment. 
• London-based VC firm Anthemis co-led the growth round alongside crypto-focused fund Dragonfly Capital. Anthemis is a follow-on investor in Ejara, having also led the fintech’s $2 million seed round announced last October. 
• The startup has the ambition to become a financial super app for users in French-speaking Africa and even those in the diaspora who send and invest money back home.

Source: TechCrunch

Our Takeaway

It is impressive to see successive significant fundraising rounds by fintech startups based in francophone Africa, a region where mobile money is prominent but often overlooked when financial innovation on the continent is discussed. Just last week, Ivorian fintech Djamo announced what seemed to be the largest equity round in the country. Ejara is one of Cameroon’s most-funded companies and boasts more than 70,000 users across nine French-speaking African countries. 

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Nigerian restaurant SaaS Orda raises $3.4m seed

Highlights

• Orda, a Nigerian food tech platform that provides a cloud-based restaurant operating system to small, independent restaurants, has secured a $3.4 million seed investment. 
• The two-year-old startup raised $1.1 million in pre-seed funding this January, bringing its total funding raised this year to $4.5 million. 
• With the fresh funding, Orda intends to add more functionalities to its platform, particularly around financial products as it looks to power lending and payments for its customers.

Source: TechNext

Our Takeaway

Like most SMEs in Africa, restaurants largely rely on pen and paper or ledgers for bookkeeping and recording important business data. But across the continent, technology startups are moving to bring these businesses online via cloud-based business management tools. Orda is one such, targeting small and medium restaurants. The global cloud-based restaurant software market is currently valued at over $70 billion and is expected to reach $116 billion in the next four years. Meanwhile, Africa’s food tech platforms, despite playing in a nascent ecosystem, are increasingly catching the eye of investors.