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South African startup Karri Payments is quickly broadening its horizons, expanding its offering to various organisations and launching in Australia, the United Kingdom (UK), United States (US) and Canada.

Founded in 2017 in partnership with Nedbank, Karri began with a pilot in four schools across the Western Cape, but is now in use across hundreds of schools across Africa.

The payments platform allows schools collecting funds for various things to message parents, who are able to quickly make payments via the app. It reconciles what payments have been received and sends reminders, and is fully supported by Nedbank.

Founder Doug Hoernle came up with the idea for the service while running his other business, ed-tech startup Rethink Education.

“After spending the past few years working with schools across South Africa, I came across an enormous opportunity to build a product which allows parents to pay schools conveniently and securely directly from a mobile wallet on their smartphone,” he told Disrupt Africa.

“At the time, my fiancé was a geography teacher and taught in a school in Cape Town. Each evening when she came home from a busy day of inspiring the minds of tomorrow’s leaders, she would sit up counting ZAR5 coins for the civvies day her school had just ran, or the ZAR100 notes for the geography trip that she was taking her class on. It was painful to watch, even more painful for her to count.”

To make matters worse, he said his friends were “constantly whining” about the ZAR10 that they needed to send to their child’s teacher for the class bake sale, saying they did not carry cash and ATM trips with children were a hassle.

“I knew there had to be a better, easier and safer way to make these payments back to schools, and get rid of the administration around these kind of collections for schools,” Hoernle said.

The solution was Karri, which was swiftly rolled out to schools across South Africa in order to help schools collect funds from their parents. It is also now expanding its offering to include other organisations, such as churches and sports clubs.

Hoernle says Karri is more than just a payments platform, however.

“Karri has a unique mobile wallet functionality that allows parents to load funds onto their Karri accounts. To date, over 40 per cent of parents using Karri store funds in their wallets each month, as they see it as a way to budget for the upcoming months school activities,” he said.

The startup, which has a team of 20 full-time employees, is now actively expanding into other markets. It already has small teams based in Dublin and Sydney, and is in the process of launching in Australia, the UK, US and Canada.

“We will also consider launching in other African countries through our relationship with Nedbank,” said Hoernle.

All this has been achieved without the need for external investment. Karri is funded by its own revenues – charging a small fee on funds collected through the platform.

“A typical school will collect a few million rands through the Karri app a year. If the school runs school fees through Karri, this can easily get into the hundreds of millions,” Hoernle said.

“We have no intention of raising traditional VC funding as Karri’s model was operationally profitable from day one. We have every intention of building Karri into a global fintech company that competes with the likes of AliPay and Naspers.”

The post SA’s Karri thinking big with geographical and sector expansion appeared first on Disrupt Africa.

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South African startup Karri Payments is quickly broadening its horizons, expanding its offering to various organisations and launching in Australia, the United Kingdom (UK), United States (US) and Canada.

Founded in 2017 in partnership with Nedbank, Karri began with a pilot in four schools across the Western Cape, but is now in use across hundreds of schools across Africa.

The payments platform allows schools collecting funds for various things to message parents, who are able to quickly make payments via the app. It reconciles what payments have been received and sends reminders, and is fully supported by Nedbank.

Founder Doug Hoernle came up with the idea for the service while running his other business, ed-tech startup Rethink Education.

“After spending the past few years working with schools across South Africa, I came across an enormous opportunity to build a product which allows parents to pay schools conveniently and securely directly from a mobile wallet on their smartphone,” he told Disrupt Africa.

“At the time, my fiancé was a geography teacher and taught in a school in Cape Town. Each evening when she came home from a busy day of inspiring the minds of tomorrow’s leaders, she would sit up counting ZAR5 coins for the civvies day her school had just ran, or the ZAR100 notes for the geography trip that she was taking her class on. It was painful to watch, even more painful for her to count.”

To make matters worse, he said his friends were “constantly whining” about the ZAR10 that they needed to send to their child’s teacher for the class bake sale, saying they did not carry cash and ATM trips with children were a hassle.

“I knew there had to be a better, easier and safer way to make these payments back to schools, and get rid of the administration around these kind of collections for schools,” Hoernle said.

The solution was Karri, which was swiftly rolled out to schools across South Africa in order to help schools collect funds from their parents. It is also now expanding its offering to include other organisations, such as churches and sports clubs.

Hoernle says Karri is more than just a payments platform, however.

“Karri has a unique mobile wallet functionality that allows parents to load funds onto their Karri accounts. To date, over 40 per cent of parents using Karri store funds in their wallets each month, as they see it as a way to budget for the upcoming months school activities,” he said.

The startup, which has a team of 20 full-time employees, is now actively expanding into other markets. It already has small teams based in Dublin and Sydney, and is in the process of launching in Australia, the UK, US and Canada.

“We will also consider launching in other African countries through our relationship with Nedbank,” said Hoernle.

All this has been achieved without the need for external investment. Karri is funded by its own revenues – charging a small fee on funds collected through the platform.

“A typical school will collect a few million rands through the Karri app a year. If the school runs school fees through Karri, this can easily get into the hundreds of millions,” Hoernle said.

“We have no intention of raising traditional VC funding as Karri’s model was operationally profitable from day one. We have every intention of building Karri into a global fintech company that competes with the likes of AliPay and Naspers.”

The post SA’s Karri thinking big with geographical and sector expansion appeared first on Disrupt Africa.

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Investment firm Sawari Ventures has announced the US$35 million first closing of a fund for investing in technology and knowledge driven companies in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.

The raise, which is part of the US$70 million Sawari Ventures North Africa Fund I (SVNFI), was announced on the sidelines of the Africa 2018 Business Forum in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Investors include the European Investment Bank (EIB), the UK’s CDC, Proparco, and the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF) managed by Triple Jump.

The fund will invest an average ticket size of US$1.5 million and will be looking to back 25 growth stage North African companies leading the knowledge economy in sectors such as ICT, fintech, ed-tech, e-health, and renewable energy. Sawari Ventures will also soon announce the closing of an Egypt only fund in parallel to SVNFI.

“We are creating the first of a kind VC vehicle to combine top tier international and local institutional investors to cement VC as an asset class in Egypt; we are initiating a sustainable Egyptian VC industry to ensure availability of funding for future entrepreneurs,” said Wael Amin, partner at Sawari Ventures.

The post Sawari Ventures raises $35m to invest in North African tech startups appeared first on Disrupt Africa.

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Investment firm Sawari Ventures has announced the US$35 million first closing of a fund for investing in technology and knowledge driven companies in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.

The raise, which is part of the US$70 million Sawari Ventures North Africa Fund I (SVNFI), was announced on the sidelines of the Africa 2018 Business Forum in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Investors include the European Investment Bank (EIB), the UK’s CDC, Proparco, and the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF) managed by Triple Jump.

The fund will invest an average ticket size of US$1.5 million and will be looking to back 25 growth stage North African companies leading the knowledge economy in sectors such as ICT, fintech, ed-tech, e-health, and renewable energy. Sawari Ventures will also soon announce the closing of an Egypt only fund in parallel to SVNFI.

“We are creating the first of a kind VC vehicle to combine top tier international and local institutional investors to cement VC as an asset class in Egypt; we are initiating a sustainable Egyptian VC industry to ensure availability of funding for future entrepreneurs,” said Wael Amin, partner at Sawari Ventures.

The post Sawari Ventures raises $35m to invest in North African tech startups appeared first on Disrupt Africa.

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Six African tech startups are among the 11 companies provided with equity-free funding as part of the third cohort of the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator Innovation Fund.

Launched in July 2016, the fund offers between GB£100,000 (US$140,000) and GB£250,000 (US$349,000) to startups leveraging mobile to achieve socio-economic impact in their local markets in Africa and Asia.

The first round of the fund saw nine grantees backed in April 2017, while a further 15 investments were made through the Fund’s second round in February 2018. Fifteen of those 24 startups were African.

Eleven more recipients have now been announced by the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator after an application process earlier this year, with six of them hailing from the continent. They include Ghanaian agri-tech startup AgroCenta, Ivory Coast-based mobile-supported plastic recycling solution Coliba and Kenyan ed-tech platform Eneza Education.

Also funded are Cameroonian maternal health platform GiftedMom, Benin-based mobile identity solution KEA Medicals, and Ethiopian recruitment service Taskmoby.

The six African recipients are joined by five more companies, namely Greenovator (Myanmar), Pacific Ads Group (Papua New Guinea), Qlue (Indonesia), SkyEye (Samoa), and  oDoc (Sri Lanka).

“With the latest additions, our portfolio now covers 23 markets in total, including eight new countries. The representation of very diverse ecosystems is critical for us to help demonstrate that the case for collaboration between startups and mobile operators is not the prerogative of more structured ecosystems like Nairobi or Jakarta, but can also become a reality in Apia or Cotonou,” said Max Cuvellier, head of the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator.

“The breadth of sectors represented within the portfolio is also expanding, with new challenges such as citizen engagement, waste management, or universal medical identity being tackled by the newcomers.”

The post GSMA backs 6 African startups through innovation fund appeared first on Disrupt Africa.

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Ride-hailing startup GoZem has launched operations in Togo, with plans to expand into other countries and verticals in the short-term.

Launched last month on the back of raising US$900,000 in funding in June, GoZem is for now focused on motorcycle taxis in Togo, but will add cars next year.

It has already completed more than 1,500 rides, onboarded more than 100 drivers and had over 8,000 customers download its app, but is planning almost immediate expansion.

“Our strategy is to expand to new countries, starting in H1 2019 with Benin and Cameroon, and develop new verticals, such as food delivery and last mile delivery,” said Martin Lehmann, who is in charge of fundraising at Reengine Ventures, the company behind GoZem.

“Public transportation services are inefficient and unreliable, and private transportation service are disorganised and unsafe. The only solution to these problems is GoZem.

Though companies such as SafeBoda, SafeMotos, Taxify and Uber operate across various East African markets, GoZem does not face a huge amount of competition within its target markets, and is banking on quick expansion in order to corner the market.

“We base our strategy on expansion. In six months we will be live in three countries – Togo, Benin and Cameroon – and after that we will continue to expand in the CFA Franc Zone, plus Nigeria, Rwanda and Ghana,” Lehmann said.

The post Ride-hailing startup GoZem launches in Togo with grand plans appeared first on Disrupt Africa.

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Ride-hailing startup GoZem has launched operations in Togo, with plans to expand into other countries and verticals in the short-term.

Launched last month on the back of raising US$900,000 in funding in June, GoZem is for now focused on motorcycle taxis in Togo, but will add cars next year.

It has already completed more than 1,500 rides, onboarded more than 100 drivers and had over 8,000 customers download its app, but is planning almost immediate expansion.

“Our strategy is to expand to new countries, starting in H1 2019 with Benin and Cameroon, and develop new verticals, such as food delivery and last mile delivery,” said Martin Lehmann, who is in charge of fundraising at Reengine Ventures, the company behind GoZem.

“Public transportation services are inefficient and unreliable, and private transportation service are disorganised and unsafe. The only solution to these problems is GoZem.

Though companies such as SafeBoda, SafeMotos, Taxify and Uber operate across various East African markets, GoZem does not face a huge amount of competition within its target markets, and is banking on quick expansion in order to corner the market.

“We base our strategy on expansion. In six months we will be live in three countries – Togo, Benin and Cameroon – and after that we will continue to expand in the CFA Franc Zone, plus Nigeria, Rwanda and Ghana,” Lehmann said.

The post Ride-hailing startup GoZem launches in Togo with grand plans appeared first on Disrupt Africa.

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The Kenya-born Amar Inamdar describes himself as “non-linear”, a “scientist, explorer, entrepreneur and emerging markets investor”.

“I’ve had the privilege to work all over the world with some amazing businesses over the last 25 years. I spent a good part of my career with big corporations – in the US with the IFC and in the Netherlands with Shell – but always on the frontier of what is possible and in emerging markets,” he said.

At heart, Inamdar says he is always in “lean startup mode”

“I’m happiest when I’m working with a crazy-dedicated small team trying to do something that everyone says is impossible,” he said.

Right now, he is doing just that in his role of managing director of KawiSafi Ventures, a for-profit impact fund founded in 2016 and sponsored by Acumen. KawiSafi aims to catalyse the emerging high-growth potential off-grid solar energy ecosystem in East Africa, with Inamdar saying it builds on 10 hard years of experience with very patient capital investing in off-grid energy.

“Acumen’s leadership had the prescience to see that the time is now to create a for-profit, commercially-minded fund that will attract the kind of capital that can help businesses to scale and grow in a way that will impact millions, not just thousands, of people,” he said.

The fund may be young, but it is moving fast.

“We’ve built a great team here in Nairobi and we’re backed by a remarkable group of investors. We’ve achieved a successful second close and deployed about a third of our capital already into four great companies – BBOXX, d.light, Lendable and Redavia. We sit on the boards of all four, and we’re keen to do more to help build businesses in East Africa and help them achieve their goals,” Inamdar said.

Currently, KawiSafi is focusing on finalising its capital raise, supporting its existing portfolio, and developing its pipeline by making some new investments.

“We have a tight investment thesis that’s focused on decentralised, renewable power. We see tremendous opportunity from tech-driven trends for the private sector to solve one of the biggest challenges of our time – achieving universal energy access,” said Inamdar.

KawiSafi’s team is very excited about the development of the African tech space in general, and the off-grid solar market in particular.

“We’ve never seen anything like it in our history. Energy and the internet are becoming cheaper and more accessible every day; creating a self-reinforcing trajectory for people to create opportunity and build markets,” Inamdar said.  

“I’m willing to bet that, just like cellphone leapfrogged landlines, decentralised power will leapfrog the grid. And the amazing thing is that it’s going to happen here, in East Africa, before anywhere else. We’re leading the way. My team is constantly inspired by the incredible people we meet who are dedicating everything that they have to creating innovations that have the potential to reach millions of underserved people around the world.”

However, for many companies, what is lacking is the ability to translate a great product into a great business.  

“The best technology is just a black box until you can work out how to connect to people and markets. It’s all about execution. And execution is hard in Africa. The biggest challenge I see is not a lack of money, but the lack of people experienced in understanding and creating value for the customer in East Africa,” said Inamdar.

Yet those people are slowly increasing in number, while the amount of funding available is also on the rise, albeit from a small base.

“We need to demonstrate that we can bring companies to scale, make them commercial and enable investors to exit with reasonable, competitive returns,” Inamdar said. “It’s easy to invest money. The hard part is getting it back to your investors. When we can do that, we will start to attract much more interest and appetite to African businesses and entrepreneurs.”

The post Meet the Investor: Amar Inamdar, KawiSafi Ventures appeared first on Disrupt Africa.

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The Kenya-born Amar Inamdar describes himself as “non-linear”, a “scientist, explorer, entrepreneur and emerging markets investor”.

“I’ve had the privilege to work all over the world with some amazing businesses over the last 25 years. I spent a good part of my career with big corporations – in the US with the IFC and in the Netherlands with Shell – but always on the frontier of what is possible and in emerging markets,” he said.

At heart, Inamdar says he is always in “lean startup mode”

“I’m happiest when I’m working with a crazy-dedicated small team trying to do something that everyone says is impossible,” he said.

Right now, he is doing just that in his role of managing director of KawiSafi Ventures, a for-profit impact fund founded in 2016 and sponsored by Acumen. KawiSafi aims to catalyse the emerging high-growth potential off-grid solar energy ecosystem in East Africa, with Inamdar saying it builds on 10 hard years of experience with very patient capital investing in off-grid energy.

“Acumen’s leadership had the prescience to see that the time is now to create a for-profit, commercially-minded fund that will attract the kind of capital that can help businesses to scale and grow in a way that will impact millions, not just thousands, of people,” he said.

The fund may be young, but it is moving fast.

“We’ve built a great team here in Nairobi and we’re backed by a remarkable group of investors. We’ve achieved a successful second close and deployed about a third of our capital already into four great companies – BBOXX, d.light, Lendable and Redavia. We sit on the boards of all four, and we’re keen to do more to help build businesses in East Africa and help them achieve their goals,” Inamdar said.

Currently, KawiSafi is focusing on finalising its capital raise, supporting its existing portfolio, and developing its pipeline by making some new investments.

“We have a tight investment thesis that’s focused on decentralised, renewable power. We see tremendous opportunity from tech-driven trends for the private sector to solve one of the biggest challenges of our time – achieving universal energy access,” said Inamdar.

KawiSafi’s team is very excited about the development of the African tech space in general, and the off-grid solar market in particular.

“We’ve never seen anything like it in our history. Energy and the internet are becoming cheaper and more accessible every day; creating a self-reinforcing trajectory for people to create opportunity and build markets,” Inamdar said.  

“I’m willing to bet that, just like cellphone leapfrogged landlines, decentralised power will leapfrog the grid. And the amazing thing is that it’s going to happen here, in East Africa, before anywhere else. We’re leading the way. My team is constantly inspired by the incredible people we meet who are dedicating everything that they have to creating innovations that have the potential to reach millions of underserved people around the world.”

However, for many companies, what is lacking is the ability to translate a great product into a great business.  

“The best technology is just a black box until you can work out how to connect to people and markets. It’s all about execution. And execution is hard in Africa. The biggest challenge I see is not a lack of money, but the lack of people experienced in understanding and creating value for the customer in East Africa,” said Inamdar.

Yet those people are slowly increasing in number, while the amount of funding available is also on the rise, albeit from a small base.

“We need to demonstrate that we can bring companies to scale, make them commercial and enable investors to exit with reasonable, competitive returns,” Inamdar said. “It’s easy to invest money. The hard part is getting it back to your investors. When we can do that, we will start to attract much more interest and appetite to African businesses and entrepreneurs.”

The post Meet the Investor: Amar Inamdar, KawiSafi Ventures appeared first on Disrupt Africa.

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Ugandan startup M-SCAN, which develops portable mobile ultrasound devices, has been crowned Sub-Saharan Africa’s Most Promising Startup at the second edition of TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa in Lagos, Nigeria.

The Startup Battlefield Africa event took place in Lagos yesterday (December 11) after its first edition in Nairobi, Kenya, last year, which was won by Kenyan e-logistics platform Lori Systems.

The event sought Sub-Saharan Africa’s best innovators, makers and technical entrepreneurs, with 15 companies shortlisted from hundreds of entries. M-SCAN was named overall winner, securing a cash prize of US$25,000 plus a trip for two to compete in Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch’s flagship event, Disrupt, in 2019.

South African virtual banking startup Bettr was named runner up.

“Africa’s tech ecosystem is really coming into its own as successful entrepreneurs scale up their businesses and achieve good exits and IPOs. The strength of the entries for this year’s Startup Battlefield Africa confirms that there is no shortage of creative inventors, makers and entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa,” said Mike Butcher, editor at large at TechCrunch.

“We are excited to showcase great startups that not only have the potential to produce an exit in the years to come, but which are also using technology to solve real-world problems in innovative ways, from healthcare to financial inclusion. There is some world-class technology coming out of Africa, which promises to help drive prosperity across the continent and position  it as an important player in the digital economy of the future.”

The post Uganda’s M-SCAN wins TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa appeared first on Disrupt Africa.

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