Lagos-based Ventures Platform, one of Africa's most active early-stage investors, has raised $64 million so far for its second fund and is targeting a final close of $75 million, founding partner Kola Aina told TechCrunch.
Investors include the Nigerian government through its Investing in Digital and Creative Enterprises (iDICE) programme, marking the first time the government has invested in a VC fund. This is important because Nigeria's fast-growing startup community is home to the highest number of startup unicorns on the African continent.
Other limited partners in Ventures Platform's second fund include IFC, British International Investment (BII), Proparco, Standard Bank, MSMEDA and AfricanGrow, as well as prominent global backers such as European family offices such as Alder Tree Investment and former Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel. Aina said 70% of investors from previous funds have returned.
It is perhaps no surprise that Nigeria chose this company for its first investment. Since its founding in 2016, Ventures Platform has built a reputation for early identification of breakout startups in the country, and we hope to replicate this in other African markets.
Ventures Platform launched its first institutional fund, a $46 million vehicle, in 2022 to primarily focus on pre-seed and seed rounds.
Aina said the second fund will aim to “invest with more conviction” and acquire more shares, while also pursuing Series A investments. This should be good news for founders in the region, as years of retreat from Silicon Valley companies have made it difficult to raise Series A funding.
While Ventures Platform plans to increase its presence in Nigeria, the company has begun establishing a presence in Francophone West and North Africa, where it has already made several investments, to gain early access to promising deals.
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So far, this pan-African venture capital firm has funded over 90 startups across the continent. The company says most of these investments are in “painkiller” businesses across fintech, healthtech, agritech, edtech and AI – companies that solve non-consumption problems or, more simply, serve markets where people have little access to services.
Aina points to portfolio companies Moniepoint, a unicorn backed by Visa, and Paystack, owned by Stripe. These two companies are fintech companies that have pioneered new markets in online payments and small business banking.
“Many small businesses couldn’t sell beyond their neighborhood before Paystack because they couldn’t accept online payments,” he said. “Monypoint, on the other hand, has been driving financial inclusion to every corner of this country. It's a marketplace that breeds innovation.”
Other notable portfolio companies include Left Lane-backed money transfer app LemFi, Gates Foundation-backed SeamlessHR, Norfund-backed OmniRetail, QED-backed fintech Raenest, and health tech Remedial Health.
Despite accelerating innovation and more than $12 billion in funding for Africa's tech ecosystem since 2015, stakeholders are raising new concerns about a lack of exits and liquidity events. This reality has made it difficult for many VCs on the continent to raise funds, most of whom are start-up executives, and the world as a whole has faced tough times over the past two years.
However, at that time, Ventures Platform was able to attract both domestic and international LPs for the two funds despite market uncertainty.
“We have LPs that understand how venture ecosystems in other markets have developed and know that we will get there in the long run. Another reason is that we recycled capital from previous syndicates,” Aina said, noting that the firm returned four of six vintages (including five angel syndicates) between 2016 and 2022. Investors also claim that the first fund ranks among the world's top performers based on vintage year TVPI and IRR.
Still answering questions about exits and a slowdown in the continent's fundraising (from $5 billion in 2021 to $2 billion last year), Aina added that Africa's long-term potential is undiminished and describes the continent in terms of “the purest asymmetric strategy for non-consensus alpha” – high-risk, high-priced ventures.
“If you're a global capital allocator looking to truly diversify, Africa is the place to be,” he said. “By 2050, one in four humans will be African. Our GDP growth rate is twice that of the United States, but most of that value is still offline. With perseverance and local conditions, the opportunities are huge.”