The exact funding amount was not disclosed. Pharmacy Marts raised  $2 million in funding from investors since its launch.

“We are excited about having Acasia Ventures on board, given its great presence in African markets that we are planning to enter, as well as their solid network of advisors and experts in the pharmaceutical industry,” CEO and Co-Founder of Pharmacy Marts Ahmed Kadous said.

Founded in 2021, Pharmacy Marts allows pharmacists to access medical products and connect them with suppliers. It also provides access to working capital and long-term financing, including “Buy Now, Pay Later” options. Pharmacy Marts claims it currently services about 12,000 of Egypt’s pharmacies, equivalent to 20% of the total market, and boasts over 200 suppliers on its platform. The startup says it aims to digitize the pharmaceutical sector’s supply chain to improve patient access to medication.

“In a short period, Pharmacy Marts has emerged as a category leader in this space and we are confident it will continue to go from strength to strength,” Managing Partner at Acasia Ventures Aly El Shalakany said.

Rwandan-based startup Kasha, Kenya’s Maisha Meds, and Egypt-based startups Dawi Clinics and Chefaa cumulatively raised $52 million across 33 deals, and were responsible for a 2,000% increase in funding to women-led companies in Africa’s healthtech industry. 

According to Jessica Vernon, CEO of Maisha Meds, her company’s funding came from solving problems with a business model that’s different from competitors. “We’re meeting people where they first go to get care: at private drug shops, pharmacies, and clinics. And we’re using technology to make those places more digital, efficient, and accessible,” Vernon told TechCabal. 

In 2022, women-led companies in healthcare were only able to raise $2 million across 26 deals representing 1.4% of all healthtech funding. The report from Salient Advisory noted that Kasha’s $21 million Series B funding was the largest investment ever made in a woman-led health tech company in Africa. Additionally, funding to mixed-gender founding teams rose to 21% in 2023 from 10% in 2022. 

The funding in these companies follows what the Salient Advisory report described as an impressive year for the general healthtech space, which received $167 million in 2023. While the general healthtech funding was 2% lower than what investors deployed in 2022, it was better than the broader African tech ecosystem, which saw a 39% funding decline. 

Women-led startups in Africa have, over the years, been largely overlooked by venture capital and private equity investors. But 2023 was a relatively good year for gender financing. Women-led startups raised just above $200 million, a +7% positive growth on a year-on-year basis, data from Africa: The Big Deal showed. 

The 2,000% funding growth is the first time the gender financing gap in health tech startups —and the ecosystem in general— is narrowing. The funding accounted for 31% of the total investment in health tech companies in 2023.

Investors in Maisha Meds and most of the other women-led companies include global development institutions such as USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Funding from these institutions is mostly grants. 

Maisha Meds raised $5.25 million in scale-up stage 3 funding from USAID Development Innovation Ventures (DIV). Stage 3 grants are DIV’s highest level of funding awarded to innovators who have demonstrated the ability to scale up their proven solutions to critical challenges. 

Grants from institutions like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, MSD, Cencora, Microsoft, and Chemonics have contributed to setting up women-led companies in health tech and the space in general. The report noted that over half (52%) of the 145 deals for African healthtech innovators in 2023 were grants indicating the important role that grants play in bridging funding gaps for early-stage healthtech innovators. This stands out as the largest source of grant funding on the continent. However, the total ticket size of grants was only 7% of the funding raised, with the average being $168,000. 

Equity funding in comparison, accounted for 91% of funding raised, with an average ticket size of $3.2 million. Experts say there are still barriers women founders or CEOs face in accessing private equity or venture capital funding.

These barriers are not necessarily from investors’ bias against female founders or CEOs, but they could stem from these women prioritising things like family over their business, hence they don’t show up enough for investors to see them, according to Ibijoke Faborode, founder of Africa Female Founders Collective (AFFC).  

AFFC which launched in February is planning a programme in 2024 that helps women founders or CEOs create more time for their startups and meet more investors who are interested in investing in their sectors. The goal is to help these startups focus on building the innovations that make them attractive to investors and also address problems in society.

Vermon pointed out that the specific women-led startups that were funded in the DIV round are those that are innovating on unique models for healthcare delivery, including a major emphasis on the last mile and underserved populations.  

Amaan Khalfan, CEO of Goodlife Pharmacy, East Africa’s largest private retail pharmacy chain, said investors would largely fund a business that has good record keeping and can position itself in a way that identifies the opportunities in the health tech space.

Jenne Nwokoye, founder of Clafiya, a digital health platform that has raised  $610,000 to date mainly from venture capital, said women-led startups are not raising much from VCs because there is little intentionality behind funding women-led businesses. 

According to Nwokoye, it would help if more VC funds were run by women entrepreneurs. However, she notes that women need to be more open in sharing funding opportunities. 

“For the next funding cycle, I’m going to be more intentional with the investors I want, i.e. finding investors who understand health, consumerism, and finance in Africa or in general,” she said. 

Founded in  2021 by Tim Ohlsen and Emir Gluhbegovic Hohm Energy’s platform comprises two offerings; a way for customers to have their properties’ solar energy requirements determined digitally and a way to get access to credit financing for rooftop solar installation. The platform also allows solar installers to design, manage, finance and procure solar projects. 

Hohm Energy claims to have generated over 17,000 custom solar rooftop designs worth $190M and $90M in financing applications for the implementation of the designs. 

To facilitate financing for the designs, Hohm Energy has partnerships with several South African finance institutions for customers to secure structured financing. 

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Through the partnerships, Hohm customers can use the platform’s finance and credit scoring to apply for financing. “We realised that although there is an appetite for solar energy in SA, sometimes financing is a hurdle,” Ohlsen told TechCabal. “The fintech aspect will help to drive even more rooftop solar installations.”

The company will use the funding to scale its product offering across the board. This will include its tech, product innovation and solar installer skills development. Ohm Energy aims to facilitate rooftop solar installations for 7.7 million homes in South Africa and claims to be on track to reach profitability by the end of the year.

The $14 million Series A funding round was led by Equator Africa and participation from At One Ventures, TES Ventures, Renew Capital, The World We Want, and One Small Planet, among other prominent private and institutional investors. The $10 million debt facility was provided by the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). 

The funding is significant and comes at a time when attention is shifting to electric vehicles as countries around the world make efforts to make the environment safer. EV sales are projected to reach 16.7 million in 2024, representing a 20% increase from the previous year, according to estimates from the BloombergNEF. Roam which designs, develops, and deploys electric motorcycles and buses said it has managed to capture or mitigate over 120,000 tonnes of carbon emissions. This is primarily the inspiration for investors like DFC in Roam. James Polan, Vice President of the Office of Development Credit at DFC said the debt facility to Roam aligns with its goals for a cleaner future. 

But transitioning to electric vehicles isn’t cheap with the price of batteries and building infrastructure for rollout making the cost for individual owners very expensive. The Kenyan government, however, is undeterred, as they have set a 5% target for new vehicles to be electric by the end of 2025. Roam and its rival BasiGo are at the forefront of ensuring the target is achieved by providing cheaper options for consumers in the country.   

Roam offers riders in the East African country payment flexibility and the option of battery ownership. This lets users charge their batteries at a standard household outlet and significantly reduces the cost of operations while increasing the ability to travel longer distances. 

“As Africa embraces the move toward electric vehicle technology, we are proud of our impact on the environment and livelihoods across Kenya and the wider continent. This funding is a critical step for Roam to achieve our strategic objectives in scaling up and increasing utility to our customers,” said Rajal Upadhyaya, chief financial officer of Roam. 

In line with the expansion, Roam will increase the utility of its motorcycles to riders through the deployment of Roam Hub stations. These are multiple open-architecture electric motorcycle charging stations that offer a wide array of after-sales services including the option to rent batteries for a flexible period.

“At Equator, we are committed to building a future with efficient, accessible, and sustainable mobility. Roam’s innovative electric mobility platform is at the forefront of this transformation, and we are proud to provide catalytic funding that will enable Roam to build a cleaner, more equitable future for African cities,” said Nijhad Jamal, partner at Equator.

“Terms of the deal are not being disclosed at the moment,” Piggyvest told TechCabal in an official statement confirming the deal.

Two sources with knowledge of the matter put the investment amount at $3 million. Until this investment, Piggyvest had only disclosed $1.1 million in venture funding.

The fintech giant said it had received $5 million in venture funding since 2016, a detail that has not been previously reported. 

The recent investment by Flutterwave comes amid PiggyVest’s broader push to raise external funding, which has been in the works for more than two years, according to people familiar with the situation. Disagreement over valuation terms and the global economic downturn have affected fundraising, those people said. Flutterwave’s investment allows the payments company to have a deeper relationship with PiggyVest while the latter forges ahead with its investment round.

Flutterwave did not immediately respond to a request for comments. 

PiggyVest’s last major venture funding round was in 2018, when it raised $1.1 million from a roll call of angel investors. In 2021, Nigerian investment firm VFD Group said it had acquired a 12% stake in the company and became a major partner in the rollout of Pocket and Patronize. VFD Group’s acquisition of 12% in PiggyVest was a mix of cash investment and a merger of a competing VFD Group product, people with knowledge of the matter told TechCabal.

PiggyVest has maintained decent growth while claiming to be profitable. The holding company posted annual revenue of around $25 million in 2021, while its 2022 revenue grew slightly to roughly $27 million, said people familiar with the company’s finances. Those figures have not been previously reported. 

Founded in 2016, PiggyVest is as old as Flutterwave and was created by four co-founders as a savings platform for young Nigerians looking for a better way to stash their money and learn financial discipline. The app allows people to keep funds in their savings accounts on the app and accrue interest on their deposits. 

Customers can only access their funds four times a year or incur a fee penalty for early withdrawal. Since its creation, the platform said it has paid out over ₦1.1 trillion ($1.37 billion*) to customers by the end of 2022 through fixed withdrawal timelines. The platform disbursed ₦400 billion ($497.3 million) last year alone and claims it now has over 4.5 million registered users on its wealth management service.

However, PiggyVest’s business model has evolved over the last few years. The platform originally started out as a deposit holding service that invests consumer funds in government assets, such as bonds and treasury bills. Until the end of 2022, PiggyVest’s website claimed the company had a partnership with AIICO Capital, a licensed Nigerian fund manager, where customer deposits were “warehoused” and managed. The partnership helped PiggyVest navigate Nigeria’s regulatory environment, although it’s unclear how this partnership is structured. 

In recent years, PiggyVest has been reconstituted as a holding company called PiggyTech Global Holdings Limited, incorporated in the UK and Nigeria, according to information on the company’s website and B2B Hints, a business registration directory. 

The company operates multiple services, including PiggyVest, the wealth management app; Pocket, a consumer payments app; and Patronize, a point-of-sales product that allows retail stores to accept payments offline. Since mid-2023, PiggyVest’s website shows the holding company now has a fund manager license from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through an affiliate company, PV Capital, allowing it to manage customer assets as a fund manager.

*Exchange rate used is $1 = N804.4

The funding round was led by Jeremie Frimpong, a Ghanaian-Dutch professional footballer who plays as a right wing-back for Bundesliga club Bayern Leverkusen. Frimpong’s investment follows a trend of football stars backing tech startups. In 2023, French football players, Aurelien Tchouameni, Jules Kounde, and Mike Maignan participated in a $3 million funding round for StarNews Mobile, an African mobile video network.

Samuel Brooksworth, Remoteli’s founder, told TechCabal that he began the company after discovering the gap that existed between talented young graduates who could not find employment and decision-makers from various organisations that struggled to grow their business during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“The primary goal of our partnership with Jeremie Frimpong is to propel Remoteli towards our ambitious target of facilitating employment for 1 million people by 2030,” Brooksworth told TechCabal.

Part of that partnership with Frimpong involves the Pathways project that will tackle the challenge of guiding young footballers whose careers didn’t pan out. Pathways project offers new opportunities, and with Remoteli’s support in training and upskilling, these athletes can unlock potential careers off the pitch. 

Frimpong shares Brooksworth’s optimism and believes in adding value to more people’s lives. “I invested because I believe in what Remoteli is trying to do. I care a lot about developing people and places that don’t have a lot of opportunities because that is the background I come from. When Samuel pitched the idea to me, I bought in immediately,” the footballer told TechCabal in an interview.

Remoteli says it has strategically focused on bootstrapping and minimal fundraising to maximize organic growth. The startup boasts of AI-powered software that matches organizations with qualified tech talent. It is also developing a suite of tools and resources designed to empower companies worldwide by connecting them with talented and ambitious African professionals. These include project management tools, seamless communication channels, time tracking, invoicing solutions, and customizable features tailored to each organisation’s needs. 

The startup claims to have hired over 100 individuals directly and supported over 100 dedicated clients. It recently expanded to Kigali, Rwanda, and plans to extend operations to several other African countries in 2024. Remoteli has its eyes on a Series A round later this year.

Koree, a Cameroonian fintech that allows customers to save spare cash (change) on their cards, has raised a $200,000 pre-seed round. The fund will be used to grow its network of merchants, scale its user base, and ultimately achieve product-market fit, according to Magalie Gauze-Sanga, founder of Koree.

The round was backed by Tunde Akinnuwa, co-founder at Duplo, Cameroon Angels Network, Catalytic Africa, Digital Africa, and other private investors. 

Koree aims to solve the problem of spare change in cash-based economies by using a card and digital wallet that allows merchants to return their customers’ spare change. With Koree’s product, these merchants can also create loyalty programmes where customers can earn cashback rewards.

To achieve its objective of raising the pre-seed fund, Koree is set to launch a new marketplace that will enable users to get rewards on their everyday purchases. “Consumers will now earn cash when they shop on the Koree app, across 14 categories ranging from bakery, supermarket, fast food, movies, pharmacy etc,” Gauze-Sanga told TechCabal.

“They shop as usual and earn a certain percentage of the amount they have spent. The money Koree users earn in their wallet is hard cash, which they can redeem directly into their mobile money account.”

Koree will work with customers’ referenced payment service providers for them to be able to redeem their cashback. 

Since its launch in September 2022, Koree has registered more than 13,000 users and processed over 50,000 cash-based transactions worth $400,000. In that time, the fintech has also generated 30,000 private wallets. Its revenue source stems from charging merchants a subscription fee in addition to a commission on each transaction for its customers.

In June 2023, Koree won the Orange Fab Cameroon challenge. With the fintech’s aim to expand across the continent, especially within francophone Africa, the Orange Fab acceleration programme will provide resources targeted at expansion. Orange’s network of industry experts will provide mentorship for Koree’s strategic development plans. Four months later, in October, Koree won the Ecobank Fintech Challenge, taking home $50,000 in non-dilutive funding. This funding is already being used to hire in business development and engineering roles. 

With Koree’s team spread across Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, Nigeria, and Senegal, Gauze-Sanga believes that having a physical office—which will be in Douala, Cameroon—would help the team bond and create a strong work culture.

Fuse Network has announced a $10 million grant aimed at supporting businesses to access Web3 payment systems. The grant programme encompasses funding and infrastructure support. Eligible grantee businesses include businesses looking to build and use Web3 payment technologies.

According to data by Chainalysis, sub-Saharan Africa has the smallest crypto economy of all regions, accounting for 2.3% of global transaction values between July 2022 and June 2023. In that period, the region received an estimated $117.1 billion in on-chain value. However, in terms of volume, countries like Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tanzania had some of the highest grassroots adoptions in the world and ranked in the top 20 Global Crypto Adoption Index. Figures show that transaction volume made up of retail-sized transfers in Africa is at 7%, against the global average of 5.5%. Although African blockchain startups raised $474 million in 2022 to build solutions for the increasing adoption of the technology—up 429% in a year—this is still a pittance relative to the rest of the world.

Although the Fuse programme will be aimed at businesses across the world, according to CEO Mark Smargon, there will be a keen focus on enterprises in emerging markets like Africa. “In Africa, we already see very interesting businesses which have innovative Web3 use and business cases and need those solutions to reach customers better. We are excited that this program will facilitate this scaling,” Smargon told TechCabal.

The programme is currently open for applications and interested businesses, and startups can sign up on the Fuse website. Founded in 2019, Fuse Network supports various projects in DeFi, NFTs, and gaming sectors. It also provides a blockchain payments API platform which enables businesses and developers to have access to advanced payment capabilities.

tappi, an end-to-end digital commerce SaaS solution tailored for small and medium-sized businesses, has raised $1.5 million in a pre-seed round. tappi simplifies the process of creating and managing an online business profile, enabling SMEs to showcase their products and services, engage with customers, and accept payments. 

Mercy Corps Ventures and Chui Ventures led the fund round, with participation from Digital Currency Group, SOSV, Resilience17, growX ventures, Orbit Startups and Reflect Ventures, with participation from angel investors and advisors from global tech companies, including Google, Salesforce, Zendesk. tappi will use the new funding to double down on its current markets and focus on talent acquisition and overall brand building.

SMEs are the lifeblood of the African economy, contributing about 50% to the continent’s GDP and employing over 80% of the workforce. However, these businesses are rife with numerous challenges, which may include digitising their businesses to leverage profits in the digital age. 

Founded in 2022 by Kenfield Griffith (CEO) and Louis Majanja, tappi helps to digitise these small businesses by creating an online business profile or websites for them. Once a business owner creates a profile on the tappi app and supplies their business information, tappi creates a website which is SEO-optimised and indexed on Google. 

“Our goal is to help businesses achieve visibility,” Griffith told TechCabal. According to Griffith, the websites are usually available in 2 minutes. Per numbers seen by TechCabal, tappi has indexed 5,000 business pages on Google over the last few months. Via these sites, tappi helps businesses collect reviews from their customers. 

tappi also partners with mobile network operators—currently, it only partners with MTN—to ensure that small business owners can purchase ads using airtime. Oftentimes, small businesses encounter bottlenecks when trying to pay for ads with their credit cards. However, tappi offers users a specialised data bundle consisting of an ad credit for placing ads, a data bundle, and a voice bundle. 

tappi offers an AI feature that businesses can use to generate business ad descriptions. According to Griffith, tappi’s AI feature is used to provide what the businesses don’t have the resources to do. “We have found that most of these businesses do not have the resources to craft their ad copies well, hence low-performing ads,” he said. “So the tool permits them to input details about their business and get ad copy,” he said. 

tappi is not yet profitable but Griffith asserts that the startup is on the path to profitability and is looking to explore partnerships for its next phase of growth. The startup makes money from customers’ subscriptions ranging from $2 to $100. Griffith says the startup has seen a huge flow of subscribers between the $2–$19 threshold and has seen a 19% MoM growth in business ads and business data bundle subscriptions. 

Speaking on the round, Griffith said, “We are grateful to be supported by great investors who share our vision and the mission to address the untapped potential within Africa’s informal SME markets, particularly in overlooked service industries such as food services, fashion, and agriculture, and health and beauty. We are eager to empower SMEs across Africa by providing them with a trusted identity online to find customers.”

According to data from the 2023 Southern Africa Venture Capital Association report, in 2022, 11% of South Africa’s private equity (PE) firms investments went to technology companies, compared to only 3% in 2021. This represents the highest investment of any sector by the country’s PE firms.

“Information technology increased from the ninth most attractive sector in 2021 to the tied top sector in 2022,” the report states. And this is all for good reason. Between 2020-2022, technology companies recorded the most revenue growth, with 52% of portfolio companies registering a “rapid growth” in revenues. However, 29% of tech companies also recorded a decline in revenues.

Over the years, compared to its VC counterpart, South Africa’s PE sector has raised substantial amounts from pension funds, government, aid agencies and DFIs, with 2022 total assets under management totaling R213 billion (~$11 billion). For comparison, VC funds only raised $555 million in the same period.

Will private equity cushion the VC downturn?

With venture capital inflow into South Africa having declined over the last few years, the fact that PE firms are paying attention to the sector is promising. Additionally, most PE investments go to expansion and development stage companies, a demographic that has traditionally struggled to attract VC investment.

Over the years, although VC firms like Knife Capital have made efforts to avail late-stage capital into the ecosystem, there is still large room for more investments, making this focus by PE firms perhaps a welcome development. “Despite the increasing availability of deal-flow, there remains a significant follow-on financing gap for high-growth local startups with proven traction,” Keet van Zyl, partner at Knife Capital, told TechCabal.

Sometimes, this lack of late-stage capital has led startups to exit too early as they face the doom prospect of running out of runway. “Late-stage venture capital has always been hard to come by in South Africa. For most founders, if you cannot raise, it might be better to sell before you run out of runway,” says Clive Butkow, former CEO of VC firm Kalon Ventures.

With the country’s private equity market projected to assume a positive growth trajectory over the next few years, tech companies will be hoping that fund managers continue to pay attention to and write cheques for the sector, especially at a time when the VC market is going through a decline.