Founders Factory secures Ksh.16 billion to fund African tech start-ups

Venture capital firm Founders Factory Africa has announced a Ksh.16.4 billion ($113 million) funding to scale its model across the continent’s tech start-up ecosystem.

The early-stage investor across health, energy, financial technology (fintech) and education said the new injection is from the Mastercard Foundation and Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures, an impact fund within the Johnson & Johnson Foundation.

“We are excited to have new and dynamic funding, which follows on from previous investments into Founders Factory Africa by Standard Bank Group, Small Foundation and Netcare Group,” Founders Factory Africa co-founder Alina Truhina said.

The VC firm, which describes itself as “sector-agnostic”, said it will broaden its capital investment offering to include non-dilutive capital, as well as strengthen its internal capacity to better support its current start-up portfolio.

Since its inception in 2018, Founders Factory has catalysed over 55 African tech start-ups.

The venture studio was among investors in Kenyan online ticket-booking start-up BuuPass’s Ksh.163 million ($1.3 million) pre-seed round early this year, as well as digital healthcare provider Zuri Health’s Ksh.131 million ($1.3 million) pre-seed round last year.