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Tag: Catalyst fund

  • The Catalyst Fund invests $8.6 million in African enterprises

    The Catalyst Fund invests $8.6 million in African enterprises

    The BFA Global Catalyst Fund has raised $8.6 million from its $40 million goal for African climate companies. FSDAi, the Cisco Foundation, 

    USAID Prosper Africa and IT businessman Andrew Bredenkamp contributed to this fundraising round.

    The Catalyst Fund invests money in Africa’s startups working on agtech, insurtech, climate fintech, fishery management, food systems, cold chain transportation, waste management, and water resource management.

    After casting a wide net, the pan-African fund is most interested in pre-seed companies. Since then, it has helped ten startups from six countries, including Egypt, Senegal, and Morocco.

    Read also: The Catalyst Fund invests $8.6 million in African enterprises

    The Catalyst Fund wants to put money into 20 companies this year and 40 companies in the future. The Catalyst Fund gives pre-seed firms $200,000, seed firms $500,000, and series A companies $1.5 million.

    Maelis Carraro, managing partner of the Catalyst Fund, described how they work:

    Overall, giving each company $2.2 million makes sense because we are coming in early to get other investors interested. Our “pre-seed” is a simple deal for future equity (SAFE).

    Carraro also pointed out that pre-seed startups get full support, which includes an extra $100,000 for “dedicated technical support from a team of experts and operators across all the functions that a startup needs.”

    Venture capital accelerator Catalyst Fund

    Catalyst Fund began in 2016 as a pre-seed accelerator to help entrepreneurs get money, talent, and entry to the market. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office worked with them on philanthropic projects.

    Catalyst Fund was an accelerator that helped 61 startups in 15 developing countries, such as Turaco, Wasoko, Cowrywise, and FarMart in India. The fund changed from an incubator to a venture capital fund last year.

    Carraro says that the goal of this move is to strengthen the loyalty of the founders. She went on to say:

    We made this change because we wanted to help founders for a long time, unlike most grant programmes, which only run for six months and then stop. We saw that people always needed money and help.

    The Catalyst Fund is one of the new types of funding pools in Africa that are focused on climate change. It thinks that every part of the economy needs to change to deal with climate change, so it has a wide-ranging plan.

  • Catalyst Fund Invests $2m Into 10 African Climate Change Startups

    Catalyst Fund Invests $2m Into 10 African Climate Change Startups

    Catalyst Fund, a pre-seed venture capital (VC) fund and accelerator has announced that they will be investing a total of $2 million in ten startups that are working on developing solutions to improve the resiliency of communities in Africa that are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

    This is the first group of startups to receive funding from Catalyst Fund’s new $30 million investment fund. The fund is supported by the financial sector development agency FSD Africa, and its goal is to assist early-stage founders in the development of technologies that will make Africa less susceptible to the effects of climate change.

    Catalyst Fund managing partner Maelis Carraro said they are excited to engage with 10 innovative African entrepreneurs building a more resilient and sustainable future. They support mission-driven founders that share our vision of a future where everyone has the tools and opportunities to succeed. These firms use finance, software, and business models to help communities adapt to climate change.

    Carraro words, “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with 10 groundbreaking African startups working to build a more resilient and sustainable future.” 

    She continues, “Our goal is to back mission-driven founders that share our vision of a world where every individual has the tools and opportunities they need to thrive. From agri-tech to insurtech, waste management, disaster response, and carbon finance, these startups display finance, tech, and business model innovations that will help communities better adapt to climate impacts and grow their resilience.”

    Read also: Madagascar, Mauritania Get $36.5m Clean Cooking And $40 M Water Supply Project Funding

    About Catalyst Fund

    Catalyst Fund is a pre-seed venture capital fund and accelerator that provides financial support to high-impact technology firms with the goal of enhancing the climate resilience of underprivileged areas. 

    It collaborates with entrepreneurs who are driven by a mission and who share our vision of a future in which every individual possesses the resources and opportunities necessary for them to succeed.

    Catalyst Fund currently has a portfolio of 61 startups invested in emerging countries, and these companies will be added to that portfolio. 

    The portfolio firms of Catalyst Fund have so far raised more than 640 million dollars in follow-on funding, and more than 14 million consumers and small and medium-sized enterprises all around the world have already profited from the solutions that these companies have developed.

    EOSDA and Space Technology to Fight Climate Change in Africa

    The Beneficiaries of Catalyst Fund

    Three of the chosen businesses are based in Nigeria; they are cloud-native EMS (Emergency Medical Services) platform Eight Medical, sustainable agricultural firm Farmz2U, and insurtech platform PaddyCover. All three businesses are in the technology sector.

    Two of them come from Kenya in the form of the startup for the food supply chain known as Farm to Feed and the Direct Air Capture (DAC) company known as Octavia Carbon. The other two come from Egypt in the form of the tech-enabled waste collection solution known as Bekia and the precision agri-tech startup known as VAIS.

    The cohort is completed by the mobile layaway system Agro Supply from Uganda, the insurtech platform Assuraf from Senegal, and the agroforestry firm Sand to Green from the United States.

    Each of the ten startups received a total of $200,000, broken down as follows: $100,000 in capital contributions and $100,000 in individualised support and guidance from Catalyst Fund experts, all with the goal of increasing the companies’ rates of growth. In addition, direct ties with investors and talent networks that enable the startups to develop may be made available to each startup individually.