John Sculley, a former VP and president of Pepsi-Cola and CEO of Apple and once’s Silicon Valley’s top-paid executive has announced the launch of Obi Ventures to invest in startups in the emerging markets.
Speaking at a fireside chat this evening at the iHub in Nairobi, where he was unveilling his Obi Mobiles, an affordable brand of Android-powered smartphones for emerging markets. Sculley said,” We have launched Obi Ventures to invest in early stage startups but we shall be higly selective.”
Sculley didn’t mention the sectors Obi Ventures will target but from the look of things financial inclusion and ecommerce, logistics, payments, health and edtech startups will top the list. TechMoran is yet to establish the number the fund will invest in or how much the fund is worth. We are yet to establish where it will be based.
Sculley, who launched his Obi Mobiles recently in India is targeting the huge growing emerging markets in Africa, LatAm, India and Middle East where he said people buy more than one phones ina year compared to Americans who buy a phone after two years due to contracts with mobile network operators.
Just recently, a team from Index Ventures was in the country on an African investment tour. Index Ventures, is a $4b worth investment fund with over 383 Investments in 244 companies and has invested in firm such as Dropbox, Etsy, Sonos, SoundCloud, Flipboard, King, BlaBlaCar, Squarespace, Just Eat, Nasty Gal, Pure Storage, Supercell, Criteo, Funding Circle and many others.
