Fuzu.com, a Nairobi-based East Africa-focused recruitment startup has raised $3.8 million from Sparkmind.vc to expand across Africa.
Fuzu.com is Sparkmind.vc’s first investment in the company. Sparkmind.vc, is a new Nordic education focused venture capital fund has acted as a lead investor in Fuzu Series A, making an investment of €1.5m on Fuzu’s €3.4m Series A.
The investment round supports development of the next phase of the Fuzu.com platform and learning proposition, helps to strength the team across core markets and accelerates expansion across Africa.
“We are impressed about Fuzu team and what they have built so far, and we look forward to work with Jussi and his colleagues. Fuzu fits well in our investment focus as a prime example of digitally distributed, personalized lifelong learning solution that can be made accessible to tens of millions of users.”, says Sparkmind.vc Partner Vesa Laakso.
Today, Fuzu has a community of close to a million users in Kenya and Uganda and more than 1,000 organizations have used the platform for finding and nurturing talent. The potential for growth is significant with the African working age population more than doubling 2020 and 2040 to 1.1 billion people, making Africa the largest job market globally.
”We firmly believe that every human being is born with talent and that every organization wants to maximize their value to their clients. But lack of access to opportunities,support and talent make career builders and organizations fall short of their true potential. We change this by providing access to opportunities and personalized learning and guidance; and by ensuring that organizations can access just the right talent and market data, maximizing their chances for success. Our aim is to transform the African job markets and to help people learn and grow throughout their careers.”, says CEO of Fuzu Limited Jussi Hinkkanen.
Other investors in Series A include Finnfund, Cornerstone Enterprises, Aucfan Incubate, Seedstars International, Kepple Africa Ventures and Barona as well as a group of individual investors.