TC Daily

TechCabal Daily – Frontier Car Group has raised a huge sum from Nasper’s OLX

12th November 2019

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12 – 11 – 2019

Hello! Welcome to today’s edition of TC Daily. If this was forwarded to you, please take a moment to subscribe. You can also join our Telegram channel for the latest stories in the African tech ecosystem. 

Frontier Car Group (FCG), parent firm of used car marketplace Cars45 has raised $400 million from OLX Group owned by Naspers to expand its operations in emerging markets. The investment comprises a primary injection of capital in FCG, the contribution of OLX’s joint-venture shares in India and Poland, as well as the acquisition of shares held by other investors, founders and management. The arrangement makes OLX Group the largest shareholder in FCG valued at $700 million. OLX, first invested US$89 million in FCG in 2018 aiding the acquisition of WeBuyAnyCar in the United States. In the past nine years, Naspers has pulled the plug on a number of its African-based backings and sold its stake in Konga. A few months ago, Naspers listed its global empire of consumer internet assets on the Amsterdam exchange under the name of Prosus.

Cairo-based traveltech startup Tripdizer has raised a $300, 000 seed round which it plans to put into developing its platform and building its brand name. Using machine learning tools, the app helps users choose, plan, book and pay for trips. The round was led by 500 Startups through its 500 Falcons Middle East and North Africa (MENA) focused fund with the participation of angel investor Jamal El Dabal and Innoventures. The investors say the company’s steady growth at 30% month-on-month and its rising customer base make them an ideal investment.

Zimbabwean legal technology platform Lexware has come second place at the Southern Africa Innovating Justice Challenge Finals in South Africa. Lexware’s Lawbasket solution provides clients across Africa with affordable legal services at price points agreed on by the client and the lawyer. Lexware will join HiiL’s Justice Accelerator Class of 2020 and the Justice Entrepreneurship programme in the Hague in February 2020 in addition to a $32,000 in seed funding.

Join Solape Hammond, Acting Commissioner for Wealth Creation/Employment, Lagos State at TC Townhall: Edtech & the Future of Work. 

Solape Hammond is the co-founder and CEO of Impact Hub Lagos, an innovation hub for entrepreneurs that provides workspaces, consulting services and capacity building programs. Impact Hub Lagos is part of the rapidly expanding Impact Hub network of over 16,000 members across 102 hubs in 50 countries worldwide.

TC Townhall Edtech & the Future of Work will hold on November 29, 2019. We are bringing together regulators, government agencies, investors, entrepreneurs, NGOs, social enterprises and schools to set a strong agenda about how to use technology to leapfrog Africa’s education challenges and prepare our citizens for future jobs. To attend the Townhall, click here to buy your tickets. To enjoy our early-bird discount, click here or use the code TCEDTECH at checkout. Further discounts apply for companies/individuals buying at least 5 tickets. Please click here to enjoy our corporate discounts.

We are also putting together a map of the African edtech industry. If you have an edtech startup or you are a technology company doing significant work in the industry we would like to hear from you. Please fill this form.

Pan-African logistics platform Lori Systems has raised $30 million in a Series A round to bolster its technologies, launch new products for its clientele, build up its business operations as well as it’s executive team across Africa. The round was led by Chinese investors Hillhouse Capital Group and Crystal Stream Capital with participation from Apoletto Asia, the firm run by Russian billionaire founder Yuri Milner, Timon Capital, Raba VC, Endeavors Catalyst among others. In a spate of recent moves, Lori Systems has launched operations in Uganda, South Sudan and Rwanda; made key hires as well as forged key partnerships with logistics organisations like DHL and Cargill to improve its technology and operations.

Amazon Web Services plans to invest more than R365-million (US$24 million) in developing 100% black-owned small ICT businesses in South Africa as part of an equity equivalence investment programme EEIP. The programme aims to support the companies to become cloud computing experts using the AWS partner network and comes ahead of the launch of Amazon’s first data center in Capetown, South Africa.

How far the #JollofRoad team has come! It’s day 51 on the road and in less than a month, the journeying will come to an end. While we dread the end of this phenomenal culture journey, Fu’ad shares some back story as to why it is a difficult task finding an accommodation towards the end of the year in The Gambia.

Visit jollofroad.com every day to catch up on all the stories from the road! And join the conversation on Telegram and WhatsApp.

West Africa-based pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar company PEG Africa has launched in Mali, its fourth market. PEG Africa deploys and finances solar to households and SMEs in West Africa via a PAYG financing model that enables customers to replace pollutant power sources with solar energy. The company, which is currently serving over 450,000 daily users in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Senegal, has raised US$30 million in funding over the last year, including a US$25 million Series C round announced in January. With a rural electrification rate of 20%, PEG Africa sees an opportunity among Mali’s 18 million + people and plans to launch in its next country by 2021.

That’s it for today,
We’ll be back tomorrow!

– Kay

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