Partech Africa has achieved a lot in just one year. In January 2019, the fund announced it had closed €125M ($143M) investment round and opened its Nairobi offices after closing 3 deals in 2018.
Partech Africa, has raised funding from African Development Bank, L’Oréal and IFC.
In 2019, Partech Africa completed 8 transactions, sealed 6 new deals and made 2 follow-on investments. The fund welcomed six (6) new outstanding teams into the growing Partech Africa.
According to Cyril Collon, General Partner at Partech Africa, “Even with 6 new investments this year and two re-investments, we had to be extremely selective: we’ve engaged over 600 companies raising money this year, among them many great startups led by strong entrepreneurs. It proves that the skyrocketing numbers of tech fundraising in Africa are supported by strong fundamentals.”
It’s nine (9) portfolio companies work from six (6) countries in Africa and together have an extremely large impact in their spaces: more than one hundred thousand (100k+) merchants being served, four billions dollars ($4B+) of financial transactions per year, 20M+ end-users, etc.
To break it down, in April 2019, Kudi scored $5M round led by Partech. Then Yoco, a top South African fintech that builds tools and services to help entrepreneurs start, run and grow their businesses launched the Yoco Go, the most affordable card machine the market has ever seen.
Yoco is now servicing more than 64 000 merchants across South Africa and well on track to double their merchant base this year.
In Nigeria, TradeDepot, a mobile B2B trade platform that connects retailers in emerging markets directly to FMCG brands for ordering and delivery, has reached c. 30k active retailers in Nigeria alone with a GMV and revenue growth over 4x on a yearly basis.
“These companies have validated our investment strategy: outstanding team, with validated model, addressing fundamental economic opportunities that will build the next African champions. We will continue to focus on financial inclusion, online and mobile consumer services, as well as mobility, supply chain services and digitization of the informal economy,” says Tidjane Dème, General Partner at Partech Africa.
Partech Africa is an arm of Partech, a global investment firm with offices in San Francisco, Paris, Berlin and Dakar. With over $1.2B investment capacity, the fund makes investments of between $200K to $50M into enterprise and consumer tech platforms, software, digital brands and services, to hardware and deep tech across all major industries.
Partech has completed more than 20 initial public offerings and more than 50 strategic exits above $100M.
