Last night, Venture Garden Group (VGG) officially launched its funding medium, GreenHouse Capital at the Oriental Hotel, Lekki, Lagos. VGG is a holding company for fintech entities that provide innovative, data-driven, end-to-end technology platforms, and they’re looking to support home-grown startups with funding.
GreenHouse Capital exists to provide funding for local startups who don’t have the opportunity to build their businesses. According to VGG CEO, Bunmi Akinyemiju, “The premise behind our investments is that we think local, but it’s all about scaling globally.”
As a local investor, GreenHouse Capital hopes to be a catalyst to spark proper funding from foreign investors. They’ve invested a little over $3 million in their portfolio companies and as of now, three of those companies are being funded by foreign VCs (Flutterwave and SureBids recently got admitted into Y Combinator and 500 Startups respectively, and MaxNG is a TechStars cohort).
VGG CEO, Bunmi Akinyemiju, Managing Partner, Nichole Yembra, and Executive Director, Kunmi Demuren at the launch
Yesterday’s launch was basically GreenHouse Capital saying, “See what we’ve done. See how far we’ve come, and just wait and see all we are going to do.” Managing Partner, Nichole Yembra said the event was to celebrate GreenHouse Capital’s 13 companies and show that they are ready to take on more startups.
The companies GreenHouse Capital has invested in so far are –
- AppZone – AppZone is a home-grown banking and payment solutions provider. They supply banking software to microfinance banks and have over 200 microfinance banks on their platform. Right now, they host more than 2 million accounts and have over 75% of Nigerian banks as customers.
- PrepClassNG – PrepClass is a platform that connects tutors with whoever might need their services. With over 18,000 tutors on a their database, PrepClass has provided over 40,000 hours of tutoring and is active in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja.
- Rensource – Rensource is an energy company that’s built as a financial services business. They offer turnkey business opportunities that allow qualifying companies sell power as a service (PaaS) to their customers.
- Electronic Settlement Limited (ESL) – ESL is an indigenous information systems management company that focuses on payment solutions. They operate in four countries – Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Zambia – and are the first aggregators of cash payments in Nigeria.
- MaxNG – MaxNG is an on-demand delivery service that delivers packages 3 hours. Since their inception in 2015, they’ve completed over 20,000 deliveries for 700 businesses.
- Riby – Riby is a finance management company with a vision to help Africans save, plan and invest. Their solutions give cooperatives, company groups, employees, individuals, associations or financial development institutions a platform to manage their financial activities.
- TalentBase – TalentBase is a Human Resource Management Solution that helps HR managers and growing businesses organise and simplify their processes. They offer payroll integration services and have partnered with E-tranzact.
- PlaySpread – PlaySpread is an analytics company that helps businesses optimise their advertising spending by monitoring TV, radio and social media. PlaySpread tracks billions of media signals in real-time and summarises what’s being said about brands, people and products on the Web, Print Media, Radio and TV, so industry users can make better decisions from a data standpoint.
- Devcenter – Devcenter is a community-driven network of African software developers and designers. With more than 800 developers on their database, Devcenter connects software developers to potential clients.
- SureBids – SureBids is a digital voucher solution for payments and financial services. They operate in 3 countries and are the owners of SureGifts, SureCredit and SureRemit.
- TutorNG – TutorNG is an online tutoring platform that
- Flutterwave – Flutterwave is Iyin Aboyeji’s latest venture and it’s a payments company that provides on-demand access to modern cloud-based payment technology. Operating in Nigeria and Ghana, Flutterwave has processed about $20 million in transactions in just over 4 months of operations.
