Early stage venture capital firm that focuses on B2B, and fintech startup, Rali_Cap, has announced its $30 million fund.
The VC firm, which lays its focus on providing pre-seed and seed investment for fintech startups in Latin America, Africa, and South Asia, had in April, realized its initial target of $20 million. The firm later increased the fund by another $10 million.
With this fund, Rali_Cal said it is targeting African startups in countries like: Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa; Latin American countries like: Brazil and Mexico; and South Asian countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh.
It is not stated clearly how much investment Rali_Cap would be placing on chosen startups, however, in the past, Rali_Cap make investments worth between $200,000 and $500,000.
The startup has so far invested in 13 African-based startups, as well as 12 Latin American startups, and 7 startups in South Asia, with these startups operating within the fintech sector.
Two-year old Rali_Cap fund is an early-stage focused VC firm that is managed by Rally Ventures. It is based in San Francisco, California. It has over 200 limited partner, which includes: Wave, Block, MercadoPago, Rappi, Flutterwave, Yoco, Visa, Plaid, Stripe and Coinbase.
Rali_Cap was founded in 2020 by Hayden Simmons, who also doubles as the General Partner. The VC firm raised $2 million last year from fintech-focused firms like Breyer Capital, Propel VC, Better Tomorrow Ventures, FT Partners, Bain Capital, Lateral Capital, and a few others.
Kyane Kassiri, a partner at Rali_Cap, who had also worked with Simmons in the past, said that
“Our goal is to help the founders by opening up LP buffers and a whole community of our LPs to bring value and not necessarily take active board positions. We’re here as an enabler to help them go from zero to one. That’s one way we position ourselves.”
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Speaking on why Rali_Cap only supports startups offering B2B fintech products, founder, Hayden Simmons said:
“Our whole thesis is that the unit economics of investing in early-stage B2C fintech in these markets don’t make sense yet. So it’s still too hard to build B2C products from multiple markets in Africa that target a large enough total addressable market (TAM) due to the fragmented nature of the continent. The focus on APIs enables more efficient expansion within a market because they can grow the TAM, help B2C fintechs underwrite people at the last mile, stitch together multiple markets and enable cross-regional expansion.”
Some of the startups backed by Rali_Cap include Belvo, Mono, Minka, Stitch, Union54, Pomelo, Simetrik, Brick and Abhi.