This June on Tech54, the bi-monthly newsletter from the African Business magazine and Briter Bridges, which covers all the major startup stories and giving unparalleled industry insight on Africa’s budding tech scene, we bring you the Tech54 selection of the latest stories on the VC4A blog. Let’s take a look at the most exciting deals from May.
Three-year-old payments startup Chipper Cash closed a $100M Series C round led by SBV Capital, the investment arm of a Silicon Valley bank. The fintech facilitates cross-border payments through an app and it has a presence in seven African countries and the UK. Having raised $30M in November from Ribbit Capital and Bezos Expeditions, Chipper cash will use the capital to expand its team and introduce new products.
South African health startup LifeQ has raised $47M from a host of investors including Invenfin, Virgin Group and Nedbank Corporate and Investment Bank. The company provides health solutions and biometrics-based on data taken from wearable devices. The products are used by athletes, consumers and ill patients to manage health conditions. LifeQ has offices in South Africa, the US and the Netherlands.
D.light, a leading innovator of solar energy products, has raised $10m in equity financing from Proparco. The funding will enable the expansion of the company’s solar and Pay-Go consumer finance business in Africa. Since its founding in 2006, D.light has provided solar energy to more than 100 million people in 70 countries. It has offices in Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria.
Nigerian fintech BFREE, which helps to improve consumers’ financial health through a tech-enabled, credit management solution, has raised $800,000 in a seed funding round led by Nigeria-based Beta.Ventures. The startup’s credit management solution aims to incentivise consumers that have fallen behind on their credit repayments to sustainably clear their balances by deploying a combination of self-servicing solutions, communication automation, and human operations, supported by machine learning algorithms that cluster and predict customer behaviour.
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