Ventures Platform has announced the launch of its new fund with four new investments. According to the venture capital business, the fund’s objective is to identify, develop, and promote ground-breaking market-creating innovation possibilities that would generate prosperity and position Africa as a worldwide market force.

According to the VC, the new portfolio companies have developed innovative solutions to address critical societal issues such as unbanked Africans’ access to financial services, creating borderless trade opportunities for African merchants, enabling Africans to make digital payments without internet connections, and providing credit to middle-market African businesses.

Read also Egyptian Electric Mobility Startup Shift EV Raises $9m To Scale Business

The newest portfolio companies include:

Topup Mama — a restaurant management platform for African restaurateurs aimed at unifying and optimizing the fragmented food and beverage supply chain — is the newest portfolio company. Ventures Platform stated that it invested in Topup Mama because the founder “understands the problem intimately, having grown up as the son of a restaurant owner and experiencing the daily challenges and constraints to growth,” noting that the founders are uniquely qualified to disrupt this billion-dollar market.

Fluna is a B2B SaaS treasury management and financing platform that is leading the charge to close the developing and emerging nations’ $5 trillion total credit gap. According to the fund, the Fluna founders possess an in-depth grasp of the constraints to private lending and are developing a comprehensive offering that enables African enterprises to reach and exceed their full potential.

Read also Revolutionalising Legal Practice With Technology

Shekel — a dealership management system that helps auto dealerships to obtain finance, hence enabling millions of Africans to own automobiles. The fund stated that it invested in Shekel because it will reintroduce mobility as a basic requirement for the majority of Africans and is enthused about how Shekel will emerge into a crucial rail that will underpin the urban mobility sector.

Catlog is a social commerce platform that enables merchants to reach enormous audiences using cutting-edge sales and marketing capabilities on social media networks. According to Ventures Platform, social commerce is a strong contender to become the main form of internet commerce in Africa’s extremely dynamic marketplaces, and Catlog is well-positioned to unlock huge economic opportunity for millions of small company owners.

These companies join the portfolio of six previous VP Fund IV investments in startups that are redefining how Africans access financial services through fewer barriers to banking, new point of sale solutions, mobile money agents, borderless commerce, offline payments, and card issuance APIs.

Read also Ride-hailing Company Careem Ventures Into Fintech After 10 Years In Business

“We know that founders often need more than just money to succeed. That’s why we’re here with a platform of services designed to support our portfolio companies at every stage of growth: from co-iterating on go-to-market strategy, partnerships, fundraising, to helping our founders find exceptional talent — and just about everything else in between,” the VC said in a statement. 

If you are building a company that solves a critical problem for society, you can reach out to Ventures Platform here.

Ventures Platform investments Ventures Platform investments

Ugandan Identity Verification Startup Laboremus Lands New Funding From DOB Equity

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. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh