Week in Review
Zipline lands in Nigeria 🛫, Mass employee cuts at SWVL months after IPO 📈 & Future of African Web3 boosted with investment into AyokenLabs 💰
The Week in Review is designed to inform curious minds interested in the latest activity in the African innovation ecosystem.
Funding Rounds 🚀
Talk360 raises $4m | Telecoms| South Africa - an international calling app that helps people make reliable and affordable calls to any landline or mobile phone worldwide.
Betastore raises $2.5m | B2B Marketplace | Nigeria - The Betastore marketplace enables informal traders to source fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) directly from manufacturers or distributors – which keeps the prices of the products competitive by eliminating interactions with sales agents.
AyokenLabs raises $1.4m | Web3 | Nigeria - An NFT marketplace for African creatives.
Gooo Delivery raises pre-seed round | Delivery | Egypt - offers point-to-point delivery services through an app that enables users to order food, medication, and groceries in several cities in Egypt.
Finclusion Group raises undisclosed funding - Africa-focused neobank platform, offering earned-wage access, BNPL and direct credit to its clients with a presence in South Africa, Eswatini, Namibia, Kenya and Tanzania
Shopstar raising undisclosed funding | E-commerce | South Africa - enables local entrepreneurs to build online stores.
Driveme Closes Pre-Seed Funding Round | Mobility Tech | Nigeria - DriveMe is a company focused on driver sourcing, driver verification, and driver pairing for vehicle owners and fleet operators.
HumanSquad closes pre-seed funding | Automation | Nigeria - startup automating immigration requests and processes
M Auto raises undisclosed amount | Mobility | Togo/ Benin - mobility as a service’ startup. M Auto’s mission is to provide access to innovative and sustainable electric mobility solutions to improve the quality of life of all African users.
🔦 Startup Spotlight: AyokenLabs
What❓: Ayoken is the digital collectibles marketplace that connects creators to global audiences. Unlike other NFT marketplaces, they have distribution partners including YouTubers, influencers, newsletters, crypto exchanges and telecoms to promote NFT drops
Traction📈 : Partnered with Ghanaian afrobeats artist KiDi for his first NFT drop
Market opportunity 🌍 : Growing global opportunity to give artists more ways of making money and increased access to their fans and community. The number of active NFT buyers and sellers has increased every quarter since Q2 2020
Competition⚡️: Nandi, MUDA, Afronifty
Investors: Founders Factory Africa, Kon Ventures, Crypto League, GhanaR9C Ventures and Maximus Ventures
🗞 Other News
Zipline’s drone delivery service kicks off in Kaduna, the company plans to transport vaccines, blood products, and other medical supplies to about 500 facilities.
SWVL plans to lay off 32% of its team two months after going public. Swvl is a multinational mobility as a service provider that offers tech-enabled ridesharing services. It went public after its SPAC merger with Queen's Gambit Growth Capital and was listed on the US NASDAQ.
AfricInvest closes African midcap-focused fund at over $400m. - AfricInvest, a leading investment platform active in multiple alternative asset classes including private equity, venture capital, private credit and listed equities, has announced the final close of its AfricInvest Fund IV with total commitments of US$411 million.
M&A
Appetito, the Egyptian platform that delivers groceries and household products to customers from 11 dark stores across three cities in the North African country, is acquiring Lamma, an identical startup with operations in the Maghreb regions of Tunisia and Morocco.
📢 Tell a friend to tell a friend 📩
The Week in Review is designed to inform curious minds interested in the latest activity in the African innovation ecosystem.