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Hey there! Welcome to another edition of TC Daily, your one-stop-shop for information about recent developments in the African technology scene! Please take a moment to subscribe if this mail was forwarded to you.
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Berlin-based startup ecoligo has received a EUR 2.5 million investment from Saxovent, an investor specializing in ecological investments. The current funding will be used to scale up operations and enter new markets. The solar-as-a-service provider has successfully implemented more than 20 solar projects in East and West Africa, Central America and Southeast Asia from 2016 till date. ecoligo not only provides solar systems tailored to the needs of its clients but also covers financing needs and maintenance. The company will be expanding existing hubs in Ghana, Kenya and Costa Rica and opening new locations in Southeast Asia.
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The first India Africa Entrepreneurship & Investment Summit will take place next month from the 16th to 18th in Mauritius. The Summit will be hosted by the India-Africa Economic Forum in partnership with the India Angels Network (IAN) and the Africa Business Angels Network (ABAN). The African investors’ community will be duly represented and the Angel Investors of Mauritius (AIM) launched at the Summit. Attendance is FREE but by invitation only. Apply for an invite here.
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According to analysis from Ventureburn, about 37% of the R508.1-million of the total 18 disclosed VC deals in the South African tech sector in the six months leading up to June 2019, came from the fintech subsector. This is less than half of the almost R1.2-billion invested in 25 disclosed deals in the six months to end 31 December 2018. Some of these investments include two deals worth R30.6-million in insurtech by InvestSure (R9.6m) and Inclusivity Solutions (R21m); three deals totalling R45.8-million in the crypto sector by Centbee (R17.4m), Coindirect (R17.4m) and (Revix (R11m). 26 VC deals have been reported in the first half of the year.
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| Global delivery firm Glovo has signed partnerships with Java House Africa, Zucchini Greengrocers, On the way supermarkets and Naivas supermarkets to expand its services in Kenya. The new partnerships will allow consumers make purchases more conveniently online and take delivery in less than an hour. Glovo currently operates in Kenya, Morocco, Egypt and Ivory Coast with plans to expand to Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania. |
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Cooling technology company Sure Chill has secured £4 million Series A investment from Africa-focused VC Novastar Ventures and London-based VC The Garage Soho. Sure Chill’s technology harnesses a unique property of water to enable continuous cooling from inconsistent power and is extensively used in the preservation of medical supplies like vaccines and blood. According to the company, this round of investment will enable Sure Chill to accelerate the development of wider applications of the technology for the benefit of households and businesses on a global scale, starting in Africa. We’ll bring you more details later.
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| Kenyan Safaricom’s youth summit enterprise Blaze by Safaricom, has launched an Udemy-like e-learning platform called Blaze Link. With partners like Google, IBM, Wezesha, Cloud Factory and Brighter Monday, Blaze Link offers thousands of free online courses cutting across multiple disciplines including sales and marketing, finance, agriculture, creative arts, programming and development for young adults under the age of 26. Users will also have exclusive access to master class videos on Agribusiness, Creative Arts, Fashion, Film & Photography, Music, Technology and Production & Sales. |
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French start-up kwik has appointed Nigerian lawyer and entrepreneur, Olatowun Candide-Johnson, Chairwoman of its supervisory board. Candide-Johnson has several years of experience in senior management roles within the Total Upstream Companies in Nigeria as well as in the Total Group. In her new role, Candide-Johnson will bring her years of expertise and experience to help drive the company’s ambition to become the foremost last-mile delivery service in Africa’s largest market.
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| Instagram is adding six more countries to its list of locations where it is testing a new no-likes feature for its platform. Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Japan and New Zealand will join select users in Canada for whom the like counts have been disabled from public view. Instagram says it wants interaction on social media to be focused on the quality of the content as against numbers. |
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From The Cabal
+ In May, I explored the fate of influencer marketing with plans from popular social media platforms to begin hiding likes and view counts for videos, what many of the digital marketers I spoke with refer to as vanity metrics.
+ A third of the food produced for human consumption every year gets lost or wasted, and 40% of these losses happen at post-harvest and processing levels in Africa. The lack of cold chain facilities in Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the major causes of loss of perishable foods. Wole Olayinka takes a look at startups and technologies attempting to address this challenge.
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What We’re Reading
+ Findings from this study show that three-quarters (73%) of South Africans believe that in the next decade machines or computer programmes would assume many of the jobs presently done by humans. Most South Africans are moderately positive about new technologies but many remain skeptical about its impact on the future of the labour market.
+ Tope Awotona’s Calendly which he founded in 2013, is now a US$30 million business which could not fetch him VC backing about six years ago even with a functional product and traction. He shares with Inc. how he learnt to not rely on outside funding to build his multi-million dollar business on foreign soil.
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That’s All,
See you next week!
– Kay
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