Uncategorized

How Antler East Africa is building early-stage startups with experienced professionals

February 19, 2021

4 minute read

Antler is an early-stage enterprise capital agency which might additionally be described as a “firm builder.” It helps founders construct complementary co-founding groups, offers assist with deep enterprise mannequin validation and a worldwide platform for scaling their companies. To this point, Antler has invested in and helped construct over 250 firms. Of those firms, 40% have not less than one feminine co-founder, and the founders symbolize greater than 70 nationalities.

Based in 2017 by serial entrepreneur, Magnus Grimeland, and a staff of skilled entrepreneurs, traders, and firm builders worldwide, Antler has raised greater than $75 million to assist entrepreneurs unfold throughout 9 of the world’s main entrepreneurial hubs. They embrace Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Nairobi, New York, Oslo, Singapore, Stockholm and Sydney.

Antler’s solely workplace in Africa is in Nairobi, and it’s run and led by girls.

Marie Nielsen, founding father of a paper recycling firm in Ethiopia referred to as Penda Paper Recycling, is a companion on the agency. She was an affiliate companion at Mckinsey & Firm answerable for opening their Addis Ababa workplace. Melalite Ayenew is the agency’s tech companion. Her prior expertise contains Oracle, Bain & Firm, and Princeton Consultants. Selam Kebede is the agency’s director and leads operations. Earlier than becoming a member of Antler, she labored for a few VCs and entrepreneurship assist organizations.

Turning professionals to founders

Just like different places around the globe, Antler East Africa runs two cohorts in a 12 months. The agency is specific about adopting a people-first method, they usually deliver collectively professionals with, on common, 10 years of expertise of their respective industries. These professionals who change into founders ideate, iterate and create options sometimes primarily based on insights they’ve gathered or issues noticed in the course of the course of their previous skilled expertise of their respective industries. After six months of incubation, the agency invests within the groups they can assist additional. Sometimes within the pre-seed stage, Antler cuts $100,000 checks for a 10-20% fairness in every chosen staff. However for Antler East Africa, the stake is strictly 20%.

“Our course of could be very hands-on; by working with the co-founders over a number of months, we get the chance to assist form the enterprise fashions and carry out in depth due diligence earlier than investing,” Nielsen stated to TechCrunch.

The due diligence Nielsen talks about is supported by the worldwide Antler platform, the place they pull upon its community of greater than 400 consultants throughout applied sciences and industries. After the pre-seed investments, Antler East Africa claims to proceed to assist the groups as they hit the bottom operating and begin elevating funds from follow-on traders.

Ayenew provides that the agency can also be exploring the chance to spend money on pre-existing, early-stage startups developed exterior its program, however early sufficient for them to return in and nonetheless present worth as well as to the financial funding.

On condition that Nairobi is Antler’s solely workplace in Africa, the staff seems out for founders engaged on pan-African issues and options. It has attracted founders from greater than 15 African international locations, which performs a big function in sustaining its cohorts’ outlook to be organically pan-African.

To this point, Antler East Africa has invested in a broad vary of expertise firms within the B2B, B2C and direct-to-consumer house, starting from rising sectors like robotics and AI to sectors resembling well being tech, fintech, and proptech. From its final two cohorts, Antler East Africa has invested in six startups. They embrace:

Cooked, a subscription-based meal package supplier, helps shoppers seek for, store, and prepare dinner meals at house higher. Cooked operates with weekly and month-to-month subscriptions and delivers merchandise house to its clients on pre-agreed days of the week. The founders have greater than 20 years of expertise in finance, meals, and eating places industries between themselves.

UNCOVER claims to be constructing the continent’s most trusted skincare model and content material platform by partnering with prime skincare labs in Korea. The corporate carried out a skincare survey with responses from 1,000 Kenyan girls and claims the info obtained will assist develop viral data platforms and efficient custom-made merchandise.

Having spent its early days in FMCG, and notably with small merchants, ChapChapGo recognized that the dearth of easy and inexpensive instruments tailor-made to the native context was a significant problem for Kenyan companies to undertake e-commerce. ChapChapGo allows companies to transact on-line in a couple of minutes with easy invoicing, automated reconciliation, and sooner M-PESA checkouts.

Anyi Health needs to enhance entry to monetary assist for major healthcare seekers. In Nigeria and lots of different African international locations, sufferers unable to pay their hospital payments are detained within the hospital or left untreated. Anyi Well being goals to unravel this by means of a mobile-based point-of-need credit score facility, the place sufferers can apply for credit score straight on the hospital. The corporate simply began its MVP pilot with three hospitals in Lagos, Nigeria and is seeking to increase a $300k seed spherical primarily based on pilot proof of idea.

AIFluence is an AI-driven influencer advertising platform. Based by promoting veterans, AIfluence allows manufacturers in Africa to make a greater resolution when launching, managing and evaluating their influencer advertising campaigns. The corporate has signed buyer contracts value greater than $600,000 with main worldwide and African firms, together with Sony and Safaricom.

Digiduka positions itself because the digital service answer for Kenya’s money economic system. Its thesis is that cost options in Africa have two issues shutting out thousands and thousands of potential customers. One is excessive transaction charges, ranging as excessive as 9% per transaction, and the opposite, inconvenient cost modes. With the CEO and CTO having between themselves over 15 years of expertise working with main African telcos and as a technical lead for numerous startups, they goal to construct the unified digital companies answer of selection for each shoppers and smaller retailers in Kenya.

Antler East Africa’s subsequent cohort is in April, and Kebede says by bringing good and skilled folks collectively to create excellent companies in Africa, they hope that Antler “will assist foster organizations that change the best way folks suppose, are sustainable and revolutionary in addition to encourage different folks to appreciate their very own enterprise objectives.”