Benjamin Toulouze, the head of corporate venture capital (CVC) at Axian Group, a multinational conglomerate, spent most of his career as a banker at Société Générale, France’s third-largest bank by total assets, working across France and several African markets.
These days, he runs the CVC arm at AXIAN Investment, the investment arm of the Madagascar-headquartered AXIAN Group. Based in Dubai, his team of four is split between the UAE and Antananarivo.
Toulouze got the green light to launch the corporate VC unit in late 2021, making it one of the first CVC vehicles from an African group. Four years in, AXIAN Investment has invested in 33 startups directly and holds stakes in 38 funds. Its direct portfolio includes MaxAB in Egypt, LipaLater in East Africa, Djamo in Côte d’Ivoire, Curacel, Anda in Angola, WideBot AI, and Nucleon Security in Morocco. Cheque sizes range from $50,000 for very early ideas up to $1.5 million in total exposure per company.
AXIAN Group might not be a household name in African tech, but its footprint is significant. The pan-African conglomerate, founded half a century ago by the Hiridjee family, operates in 32 countries across Africa and the Indian Ocean, with interests in telecoms, financial services, energy, real estate, and innovation. Its telecoms arm was ranked 74th on the Financial Times’ 2025 list of Africa’s fastest-growing companies.
The firm takes minority stakes of 1% to 5%, deliberately small, Toulouze says, to avoid conflicts with AXIAN’s operating businesses and to keep trust with founders and co-investors.
It has not yet had an exit, but as the parent group builds out data centre infrastructure through its STELLAR-IX brand across four markets, the CVC is leaning heavily into AI, cybersecurity, digital assets, and what Toulouze calls the “sovereignty issue”; African countries controlling their own data.
In our conversation, Toulouze explains why his team chose Dubai and Madagascar over Lagos or Nairobi, how he pitches against the “CVCs move slowly” objection, why he thinks 1–5% stakes are an important feature, how he sources in North Africa after living there, and what he looks for in founders.
This interview has been edited lightly for clarity and length.
You started your career as a banker in France before moving into venture capital. How did that transition happen?
I actually wanted to be an investor before being a banker. I started my career in France, in Paris, at a big audit firm doing acquisition due diligence, standard CPA work at the time for big French groups listed on the CAC 40. I worked for a fund that wanted to acquire a startup in France. That was in 2004. From then on, I wanted to be an investor.
But for different reasons, I got very good opportunities as a banker, first in France and then in different countries. But the dream of being close to the entrepreneur was already there. I came to AXIAN in 2019 with this idea, but it was a bit early. At the end of 2021, we got a green light internally to launch one of the very first corporate VCs from an African group. I enjoy it a lot.
You’re based in Dubai, AXIAN is in Madagascar. Those aren’t typical tech markets. Why not operate from Lagos, Nairobi, Cairo, or Johannesburg?
We are four at the corporate VC. Two of my teammates are still based in Madagascar, and we are two in Dubai. The point is, we are close to all the markets, including the big operational tech ecosystems in Africa. But the goal is to be everywhere, to be in touch with the entire ecosystem. That’s entrepreneurs, but also venture capitalists locally and internationally.
The big tech companies and we have good examples like Flutterwave in Lagos, Moniepoint, FairMoney, or in Egypt, MNT-Halan, are based in their own countries, but they go beyond.
That’s what we do. We’re ready to go and be as close as possible to different companies. All these big countries are our major zones of investment: Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, West Africa, and South Africa. We stay close to all these ecosystems, and we go on-site as soon as possible. We don’t see any issue with not being there permanently. We have a big network in different countries now, so it’s fine.
A lot of corporate VC professionals I’ve spoken to say CVCs don’t move as fast as typical VCs or that there can be strings attached. How do you convince a founder that AXIAN is the best partner?
We’ve already got these kinds of objections. The first part of my answer is that at AXIAN, we have a very strong entrepreneurship mindset. We are ready to decide quite quickly. Sometimes we move faster than the regular VCs. I don’t have any internal barriers to moving forward. If I need to get all my investment committee members for a decision, I can get one very quickly. Most of the time, when we take time, it’s because we are still questioning the business model and want to go deeper. In terms of governance and decision-making, we don’t have any issues.
On convincing the entrepreneur, interestingly, entrepreneurs are really keen to add corporate VCs to their cap tables. Because we have a complementary value proposition to regular VCs. We know the operations, and most of the time we come from the operations themselves. We know the challenges of launching a company, of keeping it striving, of day-to-day operations, HR, accounting, organisation, and strategic vision. One of the values we bring is our experience as intrapreneurs or entrepreneurs who have led either divisions or departments within a very large group.
The second thing is, as a corporate VC, we can bring potential new markets for the startup. It’s not a commitment, but when we invest in a company, we try to push for a solid partnership between the startup and the AXIAN Group—synergies, working together, going in the same direction. That’s why entrepreneurs are interested in working with us. We have a complementary value proposition, we know the operations, and we can offer a potential new growth lever.
You’ve invested in 33 startups and 38 funds. What’s the split between direct startup investment and fund commitment? Has that shifted since you launched the CVC?
It’s a complementary approach. At the very beginning in 2017, AXIAN launched the fund-of-funds activities. Of the 38 funds, more than half are very focused on the African market, where we are invested in large private equity and venture capital funds like Partech, DPI, P1 Ventures, and others.
Progressively, it became interesting to be more crisp and to have more traction on the companies themselves. Making the corporate VC was relevant. It was also relevant because in 2021 and early 2022, the group understood quite quickly that mastering technology for the African population was a strong pillar to ensure financial inclusion, energy inclusion, and digital inclusion. It is still in our mandate to push startups to give more options and new capabilities to the African population.
So it’s not two different activities; fund of funds on one side, corporate VC on the other. They work well together. The message is: whether through the fund-of-funds activity or through investments in the corporate VC, the point is to bring all the technology we discover to the African market. That’s why it’s interesting for us to connect, for example, a startup in Zimbabwe to Nigeria, Nigeria to Egypt, Egypt to Kenya. It’s a matrix we try to build.
You operate across five verticals in 21 countries. What does strategic fit mean when you’re looking at a startup or a fund?
You can consider us as the scout team of AXIAN Group. For sure, we could invest in fintech—lending, savings, payment infrastructure, digital assets, digital payments, and all these things. But these are already close to our mobile money operations and financial services departments. They’re already identified.
The idea is to be ready to invest in new trends and new tech that could be useful for African companies, SMEs, and individuals. That’s why one of our very last investments in the past few months was in digital assets using stablecoin—investing in stablecoin infrastructure. One of our mandates, and it’s even more than a mandate, it’s a mission: to understand new trends, invest in them, and integrate these new startups into the AXIAN ecosystem and the African population’s capabilities.
To complete that, as of today, we are contemplating some companies in space tech. If I go beyond pure telecom activity, we have connectivity activity based on fibre, tower infrastructure, and satellite. Satellite connectivity could be an interesting value proposition for low-density populations in the African market. Fibre is expensive. Tower infrastructure can also be expensive. So maybe we can bring an additional solution through satellite communication. That’s typically the role of AXIAN Investment and the corporate VC at AXIAN.
You invested in MaxAB, which operates in North Africa, where you also have a personal working history. How does your two-and-a-half-decade experience across France, Egypt, Morocco, Madagascar, and the UAE shape how you source deals?
I used to live in these countries, not just for short stays. I lived several years with my family in each one. That allowed me to understand the needs and challenges of these countries. When you understand how the population lives and the challenges in industry, infrastructure, and day-to-day needs, after that, it’s much easier to understand how it works in the other African countries. It’s more or less the same at one point.
In terms of deal sourcing, my different experiences and my academic network gave me access to VCs and the ecosystem. But the best access to startups, entrepreneurs, and VCs is to co-invest with them. That’s the best connection you can have to get legitimacy and credibility in the sector.
You describe yourself as an active strategic partner. You’ve invested in 33 startups—what does post-investment support actually look like?
As soon as we’ve closed and effectively invested in a company, we try to be as close as possible to the entrepreneur. When they ask for help, for introductions, for financial advice, or for organisational advice, we’re there. I sit on several boards as an observer or as an executive board member. The point is to have a very clear, regular relationship.
Most of the time, I have a call once a month with each entrepreneur. It’s key because we need to be ready to advise them and to introduce them to AXIAN Group if they have specific needs. That’s our mission post-investment: to stay as close as possible to the different entrepreneurs. That’s what we do.
If you’re interested in a startup and there’s some sort of conflict with AXIAN’s operating business, how do you manage that?
Most of the time, it’s not necessarily a conflict. As I told you, CVCs are seen as a good thing on both sides—on the entrepreneur side because we bring experience and ideas, and on the VC side because, strategically, the corporate VC could be part of the exit route for regular VCs. So we have a very good relationship with the different VCs.
More precisely, most of the time we have between 1% and 5% of the capital of the company we invest in. So we are not systemic. There is no conflict of interest because we are really small in the cap table. It’s done on purpose to avoid any conflict and to be sure that trust is there in the relationship with the entrepreneur and the VCs. We don’t have this kind of issue.
How do you think about exits?
We are a long-term investor. Exit is an option, definitely, because we are also an investor, and it’s sane to have financial KPIs. We invest in companies that can grow over time, generate positive cash flow, and generate net income. This is the life of companies. This is the life of AXIAN Group, and we duplicate it. We want to invest in viable companies.
Valuation and the growth of the company are very important for us. If we want to keep investing in the startup ecosystem and serving the African population, including individuals, SMEs and large corporates, it’s very key to keep investing in the companies of tomorrow, where they will still be alive tomorrow, next month, next year, and the next decade.
Exiting is not an issue. It’s on the roadmap. It’s not our priority now because it’s too early. We started investing four years ago, which isn’t a long time. We want to be a long-term investor. It will take time to have a very solid company. But we are really optimistic about African talent and potential, and about the companies we have invested in.
AXIAN has started building data centres in Senegal and across four markets. With AI infrastructure, are you investing more in AI because your parent company is building data centres that AI companies will need?
Absolutely. We want to invest in AI infrastructure, and we have done so already. An example: it’s not infrastructure exactly, but an AI value proposition for the Arabic language. It’s an in-house proprietary LLM system for Arabic speakers, a company called ‘WideBot AI’. They’re using AI to improve conversation automation in Arabic.
On the AI infrastructure stack, we recently invested in Guepard, a Tunisian company using AI to optimise database deduplication. A very interesting business. They want to improve AI infrastructure usage.
STELLAR-IX is a relatively recent business line within AXIAN Group. We want to be on the front foot to invest in startups that can improve the STELLAR-IX value proposition – beyond pure AI infrastructure, including fraud management and cybersecurity. We invested in Nucleon Security, a Moroccan company improving device infrastructure using zero trust, EDR, and malware solutions.
And we are convinced about the sovereignty issue. We’re convinced about the autonomy African markets and countries need to have to control the data of their own country. It’s one of the big challenges of the African market because it’s fragmented. 54 different countries. It’s a key issue for us as an investor in cloud and AI infrastructure.
What do you look for in a founder?
The point is to diversify the profile. Sometimes we have a very young founder with a strong entrepreneurship mindset. They want to change the world. They have very good execution, especially tech execution.
At the same time, we have more mature founders, around 35, 40 years old and older, who have the maturity to manage a company. Most of the time, they have a very good experience in tech or beyond, and they know perfectly how to manage a company. They’re really well structured. This kind of profile is interesting because we bet on an idea, which could be the tech; we bet on the country where the startup is active, but we also bet on the founder and their quality to transform a startup into a real, sustainable company, which is not always guaranteed. I can tell you.
The main profile I would invest in: a woman or man capable of building a sustainable company. Someone ready to improve and bring a strong value proposition for customers.
How do you find founders with those attributes?
By the network, by our understanding of the ecosystem, and by our capacity—because we don’t know all the time. We try to improve our knowledge and experience as much as possible. We have access directly or indirectly to these kinds of founders. Network, and sometimes referrals from our portfolio companies, which are quite happy with us and put us in touch.
What is your average cheque size?
As a first investment, we invest from $100,000 to $500,000. The maximum exposure per company can go up to $1.5 million.
Last year, we also dedicated a special bucket for very innovative or disruptive ideas. There, we take a different approach. Even if the company isn’t profitable, even if they don’t have a customer yet, it could be only a very good idea and a very good team. In that case, we bet on the founder’s quality and on the pain point they want to solve. We can invest $50,000, but we can do it many times.
Is there anything you want to talk about that I haven’t asked?
The main message: we are convinced about our mission at AXIAN Group, at AXIAN Investment, and at the corporate VC to bring technology to the African market. Africa is clearly our focus. Yes, we have other locations, including the UAE, but the point is to find good technologies and good founders—Africans are also very much represented in the UAE, as they are in France, Europe, and the US—and bring them back to the African continent.
We tell them: ‘You have a very big market; we can help you thrive and develop your company on the African continent.’ In the very long term, it will be an interesting bet. That’s the idea. We’ve seen many examples on the African market—in neobanking, in fintech, in e-commerce, in mobile money—of the capacity of Africa for leapfrogging over time. And leapfrogging not by one or two years but by a decade in comparison to Europe, Asia, or the US.
That’s why it’s very important for us to bring this kind of technology for the benefit of the African population. And when I say ‘population’, it’s individuals, but also MSMEs. We want to be as close as possible to small and medium-sized companies and to large corporations. The small companies are the future of Africa. We need to push them up, to push inclusion, and to give them access to the tech they deserve. That’s the idea and our objective.
