KENYA – Global investment firm, Paratec has doubled its Africa Venture fund to US$143 million and launched a Nairobi office, in Kenya, to complement its Dakar office.
According to Tidjane Deme, this is part of the firm’s strategy to undertake make 20 to 25 investments across roughly 10 countries over the next several years.
Partech has appointed Ceasar Nyagha as the investment officer for the Kenyan office as it seeks to spread it wings across East Africa.
“We are really proud to see major global investors rally around our vision and ambition to support extraordinary entrepreneurs building digital champions for Africa and emerging markets,” said Cyril Collon, General Partner at Partech.
TechCrunch reports that the investment firm will primarily target Series A and B investments and some pre-series fund at higher dollar amount.
“We will consider seed-funding — what we call seed-plus — tickets in the $500,000 range.
In terms of sectors, we’re agnostic. We’ve been looking at all…sectors. We’re open to all plays; we have a strong appetite for people who are tapping into Africa’s informal economies,” said Deme a partner at Partech.
To bring the Africa fund to US$143 million, the VC firm tapped a number of other funds, several undisclosed corporate venture arms and development finance institutions.
They include Averreos Finance III, the IFC, the IFC, the EIB and African Development Bank, which according to Deme the IFC and European Bank committed the largest amounts.
The firm led the US$16 million round in South African fintech firm Yoco and a US$3 million round in Nigerian B2B e-commerce platform TradeDepot.
“Our first investments in Yoco and TradeDepot provide strong showcases of how these champions can transform whole sectors such as retail and payments in this region,” added Cyril.
Partech launched the Paratech Africa fund in 2018 aimed at providing early-stage funding to promising start-ups and founders across the continent.
Partech announced its first raise of $70 million in early 2018 next to TLcom Capital’s US$40 million and TPG Growth’s US$2 billion including Seed capital, venture capital, growth capital.
Partech currently manages US1.46 billion across five separate funds, each of which dedicated to a specific stage of growth or to a specific geographical area.
The investment firm is headquartered in Paris and has additional offices in Berlin, San Francisco and Dakar.