Welcome to This Week in StartupGhana newsletter. Blitz through what happened in Ghana’s innovation landscape over the last week.
- Legendary Foods Africa scores additional funding from the Climate Resilient Africa Fund.
- Zeepay secures $3 million to strengthen its financial position and support its growth.
- Revna Biosciences secures grant funding from develoPPP Ventures.
- 4DX secures $10.5 million investment from the IFC for its $100M pan-African tech fund.
- PayAngel expands to Kenya to offer seamless cross border remittance services.
- 3 Ghanaian agritech startups make it to the FoodTech500 list.
Funding
In Q1 2024, the pool of venture capital from which startups once drew nourishment remains dry; however, last week, three startups (Legendary Foods Africa, Zeepay, and Revna Biosciences) secured some funding. 4DX, the Pan-African venture capital firm, also secured a capital commitment from the World Bank’s private sector arm, International Finance Corporation.
- The Kumasi-based food tech Legendary Foods secured additional capital from the Africa-focused impact-focused venture capital fund Climate Resilient Africa Fund to scale its protein alternative business. The company has developed a proprietary farming system that produces palm weevil (a nutritious powerhouse) at scale. It is then processed into value-added products such as baked cookies, shito, fried palm weevils, etc, for sale to customers or as protein ingredients to food manufacturing companies.
- Zeepay secured an additional $3 million from Verdant Capital Hybrid Fund as part of its Series A.5 funding round. Verdant Capital Hybrid Fund provided a preferred equity investment for the round, making it the company’s fifth institutional shareholder. According to the Managing Director, Andrew Takyi-Appiah, “the new funding raised will be used to strengthen our financial position in support of our high growth in 2024.”
- Revna Biosciences, the Accra-based biotechnology startup, joined the cohort of startups that have secured grant funding from the develoPPP Ventures programme. Led by Dr Derrick Edem Akpalu, Revna Biosciences aims to address the critical gap in access to advanced molecular diagnostics and precision medicine in Africa by providing advanced molecular diagnostics tests locally, supporting clinical trials, and offering biobanking.
- The Africa-focused venture capital firm 4DX has added the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to its limited partners for its third pan-African Fund. As a limited partner, the IFC has made a $10.5 million equity investment in the fund. The US$100M (target) pan-African venture capital fund will mainly make initial investments in pre-Series A startups and follow-on investments through later stages.
Product Launch and Expansion
- PayAngel, a remittance fintech company, has set up shop in Kenya as an entry point into the East Africa region. The company wants to take a piece of the $4.1 billion remittance pie in Kenya.
- Three Ghana-based agritech companies, Akofresh, Degas, and Koa, have been included in the FoodTech 500 list. Koa, the cocoa upcycling startup, ranks 42nd; Degas, the agri-fintech, ranks 70th; and Akofresh, the solar-powered cold storage provider, ranks 456th. The FoodTech 500 is an annual list of the most innovative and pioneering startups in the AgriFoodTech sector. The companies on the list were assessed based on their business size, digital footprint and sustainability.
