The news:
- P1 Ventures, a pan-African Seed Venture Capital (VC) fund, has announced the second close of its $35 million fund to expand its team and operations to Dakar, Senegal, and Nairobi, Kenya.
- The investment firm plans to use the funds to accelerate its work in sectors like AI-powered Software as a Service (SaaS), where it believes Africa has a significant economic advantage.
- The company, aiming to reach $50 million by the final close of this fund, stated that it has welcomed the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), its first public institutional investor, to join its mission to support Africa’s best entrepreneurial talents.
The IFC partnership will assist P1's early-stage tech startups to obtain growth capital to expand operations and attract follow-on funding.
In September 2023, the investment firm closed its second fund at $25 million, raising capital from several industrial conglomerates, private companies, and general partners of Europe and United States-based global funds.
The investment comes after P1 Ventures hired its first in-house data scientist last year to lead its efforts in AI-powered deal sourcing for deal flow and talent across the continent. The company claims that the initiative is the first of its kind for African investors.
The company, which claims that its Fund II companies have grown revenue threefold year on year, is attracting this investment at a time when global venture capital is drying up and foreign investors are withdrawing from the continent.
P1 Ventures, founded in 2020 by General Partners Mikael Hajjar and Hisham Halbouny, is an investment firm on a mission to support the best African entrepreneurs by closing the capital gap that limits African startup growth.
P1 Ventures seeks to back founders leveraging emerging technologies like generative AI to reimagine mainstream industries, from healthcare and banking to retail and agriculture.
The investment firm is especially keen to support seasoned business owners and recurring founders with validated products and market-proven software business models that have the potential to generate capital effectively and attract early clients.
For every $1 invested, the company claims that this strategy has helped its portfolio raise 35 times more follow-on capital.
Contrary to the status quo, which sees 90% of foreign investment focused in Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and South Africa, P1 boasts a portfolio of African companies across the continent.
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Some African startups in the investment company’s portfolio include Algeria’s mobility and logistics platform, Yassir; Egypt’s savings app, Money Fellows; Nigerian-based employee healthcare platform, Reliance Health; and Francophone-focused ecommerce and fintech app, Chari.
