Africa-focused VC firm, Atlantica Ventures, has put together a $50 million fund. The venture capital firm plans to invest the funds in tech and tech-related businesses – from seed stage onwards.
Atlantica Ventures was founded by Aniko Szigetvari and Ik Kanu in 2019. Both co-founders have had previous experiences with establishments like IFC, Helios and Convergence, as well as extensive angel investing experience.
The firms Atlantica Ventures has investment portfolio in 8 companies, which includes the likes of Paystack (which was recently acquired by Stripe), and Sendy.
The firm has network in 15 countries, with over 500 employees.
Atlantica Ventures is financed by development financial institutions, a US fund of funds, and various high net worth individuals, and has already invested in Nigerian startups Curacel and OnePipe – out of its $50 million fund.
The firm has Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, and Ivory Coast, as its target market, and places focus on fintech, agri-tech, digital security, IoT, B2B marketplace, and logistics industries.
Founding partner, Ik Kanu, while speaking about the firm and its target market, said:
“These are significant contributors to the target markets’ GDPs and are interlinked, allowing for value chain/platform investing. These sectors also exhibit some recession fluidity, and are aligned with the future-of-work. COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of technology across our target markets, and these sectors have been pivotal to the economies.”
The VC company claims it encourages portfolio companies to work with each other to maximise value, and also facilitate companies to scale faster to other markets and regions.
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While also speaking with Disrupt Africa, Kanu added that:
“We invest from seed to Series B rounds with a data-driven approach for investment opportunity evaluation and portfolio management. These startups are solving essential local problems and have demonstrated product market fit with the ability to scale globally. Atlantica Ventures becomes a mentor and partner to the startup, not just an investor. The partners have deep experience in investing and supporting companies from early stage to growth, and also turnarounds. The support is not just from an investment standpoint, but also hands-on operational.”
Mr Kanu noted that the problems African entrepreneurs solve in their country, are present in other emerging, and even developed markets. This makes cross-border expansion a path to be considered.
“To compete and penetrate outside the core market, the product-market-channel fit needs to be evaluated and complimented as necessary. For example, the process flows in a particular market may need a new product feature, a new partnership will need to be established, and the route-to-market via different channels will need to be built,” said Kanu.
