Savannah Fund’s first graduating class: Ahonya, Kola Studios & Safaridesk

Kenyan-based accelerator Savannah Fund has graduated its first class of startups in Africa. Savannah Fund is a seed capital fund that specialises in US$25 000-US$500 000 investments in early stage high growth tech (specifically web and mobile) startups in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Fund is a partnership between Mbwana Alliy, Paul Bragiel and iHub founder Erik Hersman and is touted as “a fund for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs”.

The announcement came on the eve of Pivot East, an annual mobile startups competition and conference held in a East Africa. According to Savannah Fund, the three chosen startups from Ghana, Uganda and Kenya who will receive US$25 000 worth of investment for 15% common equity in the company.

“The Savannah Fund accelerator arranged 12 sessions in Nairobi at the iHub and accumulated over 30 hours of mentoring from both local and international mentors that span tech companies and experienced entrepreneurs including Carey Eaton of Cheki and Brighter Monday, Eran Feinstein of 3G Direct Pay, Max Ventilla of Google Product Management, as well as international VCs from South Africa to Silicon Valley,” says the fund.

Below are the three graduating startups:

Ahonya: Ecommerce for electronics and computers founded by Gerard Yitamkey, Nana Addo and Philip Adzanoukpe. It aims to be the Amazon of Ghana, allowing Ghanaians to access quality products, which are currently sold offline at exorbitant prices, at low price points. Ahonya has fulfilled over 600 sales that have been successfully fulfilled since launch less than a year ago

Kola Studios: Kola Studios is a developer and publisher of Social Mobile games for the web, smartphone & tablet devices. Matatu, a local Ugandan card game, is one of their most popular games with over 4 million games played in a year, a localized version for Kenya, Karatu was recently launched. Kola’s Android games are downloaded 200 times a day with 30 000 games played day. Kola Studios is focused on creating compelling cross-platform , social and entertainment apps to the mass market. Founded in 2011, Kola is headquartered in Kampala Uganda.

Safaridesk: Returning Kenyan diaspora, Irvine Ndwiga has been living in Australia and has teamed up with a talented and experienced programmer and New Zealander Paul Hunkin to create an online travel booking platform for East Africa. The platform aims to connect vendors with clients, centralizing payments, ratings, reviews, communication, support and presentation. It plans to integrate mobile and social platforms. The first version of the product was launched in May 2013. Safaridesk is a US Delaware registered company.