by Peter Orengo
An Africa tech company, VC firm TLcom Capital, closed its Tide Africa Fund at $71 million in February and is now focusing to invest 12 startups in the next 18 months.
The group — with offices in London, Lagos, and Nairobi — is looking for tech-enabled, revenue-driven ventures in Africa from seed-stage to Series B, according to TLcom Managing Partner Maurizio Caio.
He told TechCrunch the fund was somewhat agnostic on startup sectors, but was leaning toward infrastructure, logistics ventures vs. consumer finance companies.
On geographic scope, TLcom Capital will focus primarily on startups in Africa’s big-three tech hubs — Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa — but is also eyeing rising markets, such as Ethiopia.
TLcom’s current Africa portfolio includes Nigerian trucking logistics venture Kobo360, Kenya’s Twiga Foods, a B2B food supply-chain company and tech-talent accelerator Andela.
Both of these companies have gone on to expand in Africa and receive subsequent investment by U.S. investment bank, Goldman Sachs .
For those startups who wish to pitch to TLcom Capital, Caio encouraged founders to contact one of the fund’s partners and share a value proposition. “If it’s something we find vaguely interesting, we’ll make a decision,” he said.
One $50 million round wasn’t enough for South Africa’s Jumo, so the fintech firm raised another — $55 million — in February, backed by
Goldman Sachs led the Cape Town based company’s $52 million round back in 2018.
“This fresh investment comes from new and existing…investors including Goldman Sachs, Odey Asset Management and LeapFrog Investments,” Jumo said in a statement — though Goldman told TechCrunch its participation in this week’s round isn’t confirmed.
After the latest haul, Jumo has raised $146 million in capital, according to Crunchbase.
Founded in 2015, the venture offers a full tech stack for partners to build savings, lending, and insurance products for customers in emerging markets.