EchoVC - Afrikan Heroes

EchoVC Unveils $2.5 Million Eco Pilot Fund I to Boost Early Stage African Startups

November 28, 2023

In a bold move to foster innovation and address the funding gap for underrepresented founders in Africa, EchoVC, a prominent seed and early-stage technology venture capital firm, has proudly introduced the EchoVC Eco Pilot Fund I. This $2.5 million ‘pilot’ fund, established in collaboration with Shell Foundation and co-funded through UK Aid from the UK Government, is set to propel groundbreaking ideas, products, solutions, and platforms in the realms of climate, energy, agriculture, and mobility.

Venturing into Impactful Sectors

EchoVC, known for its commitment to investing in underrepresented founders and underserved markets, is directing its focus towards very-early-stage enterprise development and innovation with the EchoVC Eco Pilot Fund I. Taiwo Kamson, Principal at EchoVC, emphasized that this strategic initiative aims to address the funding gap in impact-focused sectors, particularly in agriculture, climate, and energy.

Eghosa Omoigui, Managing Partner at EchoVC, asserted that Africa’s path to entrepreneurship, job creation, and household uplift requires mission-driven founders to be supported by high-risk capital. The Eco Pilot Fund I, as a first step initiative, intends to provide first institutional checks to founders, assisting them in syndicating financing rounds to further their mission.

Addressing Funding Disparities

The decision to launch the Eco Pilot Fund I was informed by EchoVC’s observation of the uneven distribution of funding to African entrepreneurs, despite a growing interest in harnessing business potential on the continent. According to data from 2017–2021, [Black] Africans accounted for 28% of CEOs and 31% of executive teams in startups winning financing deals. The distribution was even more skewed in sectors like energy, mobility, and agriculture, where only 21% of CEOs and 36% of executive teams were African.

Strategic Approach for Lasting Impact

Tsendai Chagwedera, Partner at EchoVC, explained the rationale behind the pilot fund, stating that it allows the firm to work out the challenges of backing founders in historically underfunded sectors. This strategic move positions EchoVC as one of the most experienced VC funds on the continent, aiming to finance startups that generate long-term positive financial and high-impact returns.

Key Features of EchoVC Eco Pilot Fund I

The EchoVC Eco Pilot Fund I will make up to ten pre-seed investments in African founders and startups focusing on key areas such as energy provision for agriculture, digital technologies to unlock finance for farmers, low-cost solutions for market information and training in farming practices, and value chain creation for small holder farmers.

Building a Climate-Resilient Future

EchoVC envisions making a lasting impact by contributing to the growth and success of innovative ventures in designated impact areas, creating jobs, uplifting incomes, and expanding the reach to customers. The firm aims to nurture groundbreaking ideas to their full potential, shaping a future where innovative ventures are not only funded but also supported in reaching their pinnacle.

Calling for Visionary Entrepreneurs

EchoVC extends an invitation to visionary entrepreneurs and forward-thinking founders in Africa to connect and shape the future together. The firm expresses gratitude to its investors and anticipates making a lasting impact with the EchoVC Eco Pilot Fund I and its future funds.

EchoVC, a Black-led technology-focused venture capital firm, operates with a mission to be the Sequoia Capital for underestimated founders and markets. With offices in Lagos, Nairobi, New York, and London, EchoVC has a portfolio of nearly seventy companies, investing in technology and technology-enabled startups across various sectors and themes, including smart planet, healthcare, education, agriculture, climate, energy, AI, financial services, mobility, commerce, media, and connectivity.

Accounting and Financial Professionals Must Lead Africa’s Transition to Sustainable Development

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard

EchoVC Launches $8M New Fund To Invest In Blockchain Startups

March 8, 2023

EchoVC, a Lagos-based venture capital firm focusing on investing in underrepresented founders and underserved markets, has created EchoVC Chain, a $8 million “pilot” blockchain-focused seed fund.

EchoVC, whose objective is to be “the Sequoia Capital for undervalued entrepreneurs and markets,” has invested in around 40 firms in diverse markets throughout the world and plans to make its first investment in the blockchain sector in 2021.

“Over the past few years at EchoVC, we have become intrigued with blockchains. The more we explored, and learned, the more excited we’ve become about the applications of blockchain and its functions in Africa,” said the firm’s Eghosa Omoigui, Tsendai Chagwedera and Deji Sasegbon in a blog post.

“For African markets, we believe blockchain functionality is more of a need, rather than a want, and our thesis is to leverage these functions to enable new leapfrogs, or unlock novel market opportunities, across the continent.”

EchoVC Chain is a US$8 million pilot seed fund focused on making investments in founders and startups that span EchoVC’s specific areas of interest. The company has been excited with two capabilities of blockchain — the ability to abstract or tokenise, and the ability to scale autonomously.

“However, our perspective on the applications of blockchain in Africa traverses multiple layers. Our first layer of focus is on foundational fintech infrastructure. This includes infrastructure leveraging stablecoins to optimise payments, liquidity, and treasury; and also explores the unbundling and delivery of crypto/fintech building blocks, or “primitives” — which other companies can utilize to scale faster,” EchoVC said.

“The second layer above this targets blockchain functionality. DeFi functionality can be leveraged in Africa for innovative financial products improving access to credit and savings, or perhaps powering new-age decentralized neobanks. NFTs can serve to foster the creator economy for the rising Gen-Z, enable games to provide new ways to earn, or even fractionalise real-world assets and portfolios to lower affordability barriers to investments.”

Finally, EchoVC is enthusiastic about the potential of DAOs, not only for their capacity to expand autonomously, but also for their ability to organise human networks.

“Examples in Africa are social collectives and informal markets, which are key strands of Africa’s offline economic fabric. DAOs can organize the offline and informal networks in a way that is beneficial for all participants. This should unlock labor liquidity and increase earning potential for the bottom-of-the-pyramid demographics. Other examples include decentralised agent networks, social networks, as well as gig networks,” the company said.

“Looking beyond this, we continue to explore other emerging blockchain aspects ranging from digital identity, privacy, decentralised infrastructure edge nodes and agile supply chains to a possible future intersection between AI/ML and DAOs. On the regulatory side, we continue to observe the evolving landscape. Our view is that regulation is required and will have a positive impact to help guide innovation, improve stability, and remove frictions that still exist between decentralized and centralised worlds. One aspect that we are tremendously excited about is the advent of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as the digital version of cash — channeled through the banking system — to remove friction in access to financial products, streamline cross-border payments, and enable programmable local money.”

EchoVC BlockChain Fund EchoVC BlockChain Fund

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Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard

The Global Extreme Tech Challenge Calls for Applications in Africa

March 26, 2021

Atlantica Ventures and EchoVC have partnered to launch the first XTC Africa, a new regional competition of Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC), which is the largest global competition for entrepreneurs addressing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through purposeful technology.

The XTC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit devoted to elevating the next generation of entrepreneurs creating new technologies and innovations to benefit humankind. Inspired by the UN’s 17 SDGs, the XTC supports and showcases the innovators harnessing the power of technology to address the greatest challenges facing humanity and the planet.

Through its global startup competition, XTC provides top contenders the potential for global visibility, the ability to raise capital, network with global entities, and gain mentorship opportunities they need to pioneer technological breakthroughs and help power a sustainable future.

The XTC competition is open to all product or service submissions based on a new technology or an innovative application of an existing technology built by the submitting company that has the potential to address one of XTC’s Tech for Good categories.

Competitors will submit their startup in one of 7 categories that bundle the UN SDGs, namely Agri-tech, food and water; Cleantech and Energy; Education; Enabling Technologies; Fintech; Healthcare; and Transportation and smart cities. There is also a Female Founder Award, and a COVID-19 Innovation Award.

Applications are open until April 2. Finalists will be announced by the beginning of May, and invited to participate in the XTC virtual bootcamp and final judging for the category winners. Category winners will be invited to pitch at the 2021 Global Finals at VivaTech in Paris in June, where the winners will be announced.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry