Grace Ashiru
Cathay Innovation, a VC firm, and AfricInvest, a multi-asset investment platform in Africa, have reached €110 million in funding for their joint Pan-African Venture Fund, which goes by the name Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund.
The investment is funded by LPs, including the Triodos investment management,EIB, Bpifrance, AfricaGrow, Proparco, FMO, Proparco, BIO, SIFEM, amongst other organizations, as well as a varied group of popular investors from all over the globe, including wealthy people from the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, as well as financial institutions that specialize in development finance.
Since it was first created in 1994, AfricInvest’s multi-strategy platform has been actively contributing to strengthening Africa’s ecosystem for private equity & VC investments.
Cathay Innovations, a leading venture capital business that began operations in 2015, assists startup companies by tapping into a global ecosystem that includes regions such as Asia, North America, Europe, Africa, and Latin America.
CAIF has provided financial support to 10 popular companies that are active across the continent since the organization was established. These companies include OZÉ, KaiOS, Migo, Aerobotics PalmPay, Boomplay, WhereIsMyTransport,Heetch, KaiOS, WhereIsMyTransport, and 54gene.
After the fund’s closing, the CAIF team will focus on investing in the most outstanding early- to growth-stage enterprises that are altering lives in Africa through tech-enabled innovative products and services. These firms will be funded with the primary goal of creating jobs in Africa.
The fund makes investments in startups spanning a wide range of sectors, such as agriculture technology, artificial intelligence, digital content, financial technology, and mobile technology, with preliminary check amounts ranging from one million euros to ten million euros for growth-stage tickets and up to one million euros for selected seed-stage tickets.
The collaboration between AfricInvest and Cathay Innovation provides Africa not only global knowledge in the field of innovation but also a robust network in the United States of America, Asia, and Europe,
According to Cathay Innovation, all of these factors are helping to build bridges connecting Africa with the rest of the globe and enabling the fund’s investees to develop into global and regional champions. The statement was made by Yassine Oussaifi, the co-head at CAIF and partner at AfricInvest of and partner at CAIF.
The offices are on three continents, and the company manages assets worth more than two billion euros. Cathay Innovation has a successful track record of investing in startups advancing the environmentally friendly and digitally driven transformation of society and business. The company has made over one hundred and twenty investments across the globe, including nineteen unicorns, and has a total portfolio value of over $2 billion.
