Two Nigerian companies, Fibre Lifestyle Inc and Piggybank are set to lead six others from South Africa, Egypt and Ghana as VC4A gets set for the 2018 VC4A Venture Showcase – Series A.
The organizers say these companies represent a new class of investment opportunity coming up across the African continent. The selected ventures have strong revenues, are well positioned for regional and international expansion, and demonstrate important innovations that are disrupting industries like agriculture, healthcare, housing, transportation, and finance.
VC4A is an ecosystem builder that leverages its infrastructure, network and expertise for the programs that contribute to Africa’s startup movement.
Since 2008, the organization designs, structures and implements successful entrepreneurship programs on the continent. VC4A runs an online platform, VC4A.COM, featuring the world’s largest database of African startups and connecting local entrepreneurs to learning resources, mentors, investors and partner programs
Business Hilights further gathered that the entrepreneurs leading these companies will showcase their business in front of investors during the Africa Early Stage Investor Summit in Cape Town, November 11-12, with the aim of raising $250k – $5m in series A capital. All companies provide a technology-intensive or innovation-based product or service that is currently available in one or more African markets.
Whereas the Fibre Lifestyle developed the easiest way to find and pay for rental homes in Nigeria by partnering with landlords around the country Fibre to offer their homes to verified tenants looking to rent, Piggybank is a simple service that helps millennials curb their spending habits while improving their savings culture by automating deposits periodically, to reach a specific savings target.
Other announced firms include AgroCenta from Ghana which aims to innovate online platform that empowers smallholder farmers and farmer-based organizations in rural farming communities to access a wider online market to trade fairly and equitably.
Gebeya Inc from Ethiopia, is a fast and secure online marketplace that connects top African IT experts with businesses seeking to develop new technology solutions.
Also, GoMetro from South Africa; allows any business or company to design and implement a managed transport service. The flexible cloud-based technology makes transport planning, tracking, paying and reporting much easier.
Invoiceworx also from South Africa; is a working capital financing company aiming to provide access to inventory and purchase order of financing for small businesses.
Nawah-Scientific from Egypt; is the first, private, multidisciplinary research center and platform in Egypt catering for natural and medical sciences.
Shezlong from Egypt; is an online mental health platform that allows patients to connected with licensed therapists via video call on mobile devices or the web.
From this week going forward, the selected start-ups will be linked to the top VC investors as mentors and receive access to the bespoke curriculum before the 1-week residency in Cape Town, South Africa.
During the residency, the startups will have the opportunity to interact with and learn from their mentors, peers, and partners, before delivering their pitch on the main stage of the Africa Early Stage Investor Summit
The program offers two days of networking opportunities at the Summit and where entrepreneurs will also engage with interested investors during their deep-dive sessions. Moreover, the participants will pitch to a wider audience of corporates, investors and tech professionals at VC4A partner events AfricaCom and AfricArena.
VC4A worked closely with the Africa investment community to refer candidates to the showcase, involving investors in the screening, selection and interview process. The 8 companies have been selected from over 1000 applicants by the investor committee representing continent’s leading VC funds such as Accion, Orange Digital Ventures, Knife Capital, Ventures Platform, Blue Haven, 4Di Capital, AngelHub Ventures, Silvertree Internet Holdings, Newtown Partners, Outlierz, Algebra Ventures, A15, Grey Elephant Ventures, Goodwell Investments, Golden Palm Investments, Mercy Corps, Compass Venture Capital and Greentech Capital Partners.
