Founders Factory Africa secures $144 million to invest in more early-stage startups
South Africa-based venture builder, Founders Factory Africa has secured an additional $114 million in funding to scale its hybrid tech startups investment model across the continent.
This latest investment came from the Mastercard Foundation and Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures, an impact fund within the Johnson & Johnson Foundation. It follows on from previous investments into Founders Factory Africa by Standard Bank, Small Foundation and Netcare.
“We are excited to have new and dynamic funding, which follows on from previous investments into Founders Factory Africa by Standard Bank Group, Small Foundation and Netcare Group,” said Alina Truhina, co-founder of Founders Factory Africa.
The firm in a statement says the support will enable Founders Factory Africa to scale its model and better serve technology-led start-ups and founders across the African continent.
Since its inception in 2018, Founders Factory Africa has catalysed the trajectory of over 55 tech startups across the continent. The additional funding affirms its hybrid investment model of combining capital and operational support and will help the early-stage investor further iterate this model.
The early-stage investor says the funding will enable it to reemphasise its model by becoming sector-agnostic in its investment with founders who prioritise business fundamentals and will also double down on addressing the gender imbalance in the ecosystem. It will also broaden its capital investment offering to include non-dilutive capital, supporting the continent’s need for different capital deployment types across the venture maturity curve as well as strengthen itsinternal capacity to continue to provide its portfolio of start-ups with the best venture-building support on the continent.
“Moving Africa forward requires more of us to support tech-driven, solution-oriented ventures that have the potential to scale and make an impact at speed. Our role as Founders Factory Africa is to provide founders with the funding, knowledge, and hands-on venture building support they need to achieve commercial success and create outsized, systematic impact,” said Founders Factory CEO, Bongani Sithole.
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