Top private equity firms among over 100 investors to listen to AfricArena pitches

Officials from international private equity investors such as AfricaInvest, Global Founders Capital and Breega Capital were among the over 100 investors that listened to pitches at the inaugural AfricArena startup investment conference held in Cape Town.

AfricArena lead organiser Christophe Viarnaud said the three private equity companies, which together manage over a billion US dollars in investments, were among 67 local and foreign investors represented at the two-day event, which ended yesterday.

They were among the over 450 delegates that attended the conference, which was organised by Silicon Cape and La French Tech was held at the Century City Conference Centre in the city. A further 54 international investors streamed the conference’s pitch battles online, said Viarnaud.

The highlight of the conference was the Battle Arena which hosted 40 live start startup battles, all of which were live-streamed on investor platform EuroQuity.

AfricArena saw 67 investors from around the world witness 40 live startup pitch battles at the conference’s Battle Arena

Viarnaud said that of the 54 international investors that streamed the pitches online throughout the conference, more than 40 did so on the first day of the conference alone.

“These include individual investors, tech firms and private equity players mostly based in Europe,” he said.

Viarnaud said what had set the conference apart was the high representation of international investors. He said a number of investors had expressed interest in participating startups, with some looking to doing deals in the next few weeks.

In an earlier press release, BPI France’s head of international programmes Isabelle Bébéar said all the recorded sessions would be available on the EuroQuity site for follow-up viewing. “There were lots of questions which is always a good indication,” added Bébéar.

A number of investors who viewed on the interactive EuroQuity platform were able to ask pitching startups questions in real time. Inquiries ranged from sales figures, business models and technical questions.

“We partnered with EuroQuity because we think it’s a good opportunity to connect the African startup ecosystem with the French-European ecosystem of investors, corporates and other startups and EuroQuity is a very good medium to create those links,” said Bébéar.

Missed out on the action? You can view some of the pitches here: Day 1 and Day 2.

 

Featured image (from left to right): Representatives from Go Metro, Deo Lan and Airshop pitching at the AfricArena Battle Arena for the Air France mobile solutions for travel challenge