Ingressive Capital grows African tech fund to $10m

Lagos based venture capital (VC) fund Ingressive Capital has announced that it has doubled its investment fund to $10-million, to back high-growth, tech-enabled startups across Africa.

The venture capital (VC) fund, which was founded in 2017, made the announcement in a statement yesterday.

The fund targets pre-seed and seed-stage tech-enabled businesses in the B2B space that provide tech solutions to Africa’s traditional billion-dollar industries, as well as B2C fintech and internet companies.

Ingressive Capital’s average ticket size is between $200 000 and $400 000 and the fund aims to take a 10% equity stake in those companies it invest in.

Ingressive Capital, which invests in African tech startups, has doubled its fund size to $10m

About 20% of the fund’s investors run some of Africa’s largest traditional businesses. This, said Ingressive Capital gives the portfolio access to business development and pan-African markets.

The remaining 80% of investors run later stage investment funds. Through Ingressive Capital’s network of limited partners, they help companies get follow-on funding from abroad.

Some of the fund’s new investors include the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, Plexo Capital, Platform Capital and other institutional capital. Additional backers include Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel, and those at Techstars, WTI and over 10 other top funds and accelerators.

Fund advisors include Foundry Group’s Seth Levine, Courtside Ventures’s Kai Bond and WTI’s Maurice Werdegar.

The fund’s portfolio includes Paystack, Tizeti, Jetstream, 54gene, Oze, Bamboo and many more high-growth startups.

Commenting on investing during the current testing times, the fund’s founder Maya Horgan-Famodu noted how many billion-dollar companies have been founded during economic downturns and market contractions.

“We know that creativity blossoms when resources become scarce. We launched and grew Ingressive through Nigeria’s last recession.

“As far as global businesses, IBM found its market and scaled through the Great Depression. Zendesk launched in 2007 and raised in 2008, and Airbnb was founded out of the 2008 downturn. WhatsApp, Uber and Venmo launched in the 2009 recession.

“And on the continent, Safaricom was founded in 1993 from Kenya’s worst economic performance since its independence with inflation reaching 100% that year, and mPesa started in 2007, and grew through the following years’ global recession,” said Horgan-Famodu.

Featured image: Ingressive Capital founder Maya Horgan-Famodu (Facebook)