With offices in Lagos and Nairobi, TLcom Capital, an African venture capital firm that specialises in early-stage entrepreneurs has raised $154 million for its second fund, TIDE Africa Fund II.
Maurizio Caio, founder and managing partner at TLcom Capital disclosed the funding in a media release on Monday.
With the final close, the company is now Africa’s largest seed and series A investor.
The announcement of the second fund’s first closing at $70 million, matching the size of the previous fund, TIDE Africa Fund I, was made by TLcom Capital two years and a few months before this event.
With initial investments ranging from $1 million to $3 million, TLcom Capital, which focuses on conventional industries including fintech, mobility, agriculture, healthcare, education, and commerce, has already supported six firms out of its new fund.
SeamlessHR, FairMoney, Zone, and Vendease are a few of them. The company has also added ILLA, a middle-mile logistics platform, and Littlefish to its portfolio.
These two additions represent the company’s first investments in South Africa and Egypt, respectively, and allow SMEs to access banking and payment services.
Investors in TIDE Africa Fund II include the European Investment Bank (EIB), Allianz, DEG Impact’s joint venture, AfricaGrow, Visa Foundation, and Bertelsmann.
In addition to extending its reach to Egypt and South Africa, the new fund allows TLcom to collaborate with African entrepreneurs to address the largest and most intricate problems facing the continent through creative solutions.
“We are maintaining the same investment strategy for TIDE Africa Fund II as we had for our first fund, which made over 80% of its investments at seed or Series A.
“With this final close, we’re thrilled that TLcom is in an even stronger position to continue to partner with Africa’s most talented entrepreneurs from early in their company-building journeys,” Caio said in the statement.
We earlier reported that Reed Hastings, a co-founder of Netflix, and Eric Schmidt, a former CEO of Alphabet, participated in a 27 million dollar funding round for an African solar irrigation firm, SunCulture, in Kenya.
