Afridigest Week in Review: Healthtech heats up

+All eyes on Egypt +Negotiating term sheets +Strategic M&A +Out-of-pocket health spending +3 lessons to learn from IROKO

Emeka Ajene

Feb 14

The Afridigest Week in Review is a must-read weekly recap for Africa-focused founders, executives, and investors, as well as interested observers. Share it liberally. 😊

Welcome back, friends! The most clicked link from last week was the NFX piece on fintech-enabled marketplaces. And in case you missed it, I published 'Three lessons to learn from the early days of Nigeria's IROKO' on Saturday. That said, let’s get into Week 6.

If you’re new, welcome 🙌 — you’ll receive a weekly digest like this one every Monday and, generally (but not always), an original essay/article on Saturdays. For past essays and digests, visit the archive.

Week 6 2022: Feb 6 - 12

Digital health GIF - Afridigest — Credit: *Austin Pietrobono*

📰 Deal of the Week

HEALTHTECH HEATS UP

Reliance Health, a Nigerian digital healthcare provider offering health insurance, telemedicine, and other services via a network of partner and proprietary healthcare facilities, raised a $40M Series B led by General Atlantic, with participation from Partech, Picus Capital, Tencent Exploration, AAIC, P1 Ventures, Laerdal Million Lives Fund, Arvantis Social Foundation Impact Investment, and M3, Inc.

💡 Why it’s the deal of the week: In our January piece on trends & themes to watch this year, we wrote that “2022 could see significant developments in non-fintech sectors like healthtech” and this deal certainly helps to validate that viewpoint. It’s the largest Series B to date in African healthtech and it’s also General Atlantic’s first technology investment in Africa. (According to the Financial Times, GA "is known as one of the smartest investors in the technology sector.")

⛏️ Go deeper:

Model: As a single-fee healthcare provider, Reliance operates both B2C and B2B models
- B2C: Individuals select monthly, quarterly, or annual health insurance plans ranging from ₦3,500 (~$7.00) to ₦148,500 (~$297.00)
- B2B: Businesses subscribe on behalf of their employees at a discounted rate — the platform has ~600 B2B customers
Use of funds:
- Product development: Reliance plans to develop and scale new products, particularly those targeted towards Africans in the diaspora
- Market expansion: Reliance aims to serve emerging markets within and outside of Africa; it plans to expand into three or so new markets in 2022, beginning with Egypt (whispers: MENASSA)
- Market penetration and talent: Reliance Health will build additional healthcare facilities in Nigeria and hire talent to support its various initiatives across markets
Early days: Watch the original 2014 pitch from Reliance Health CEO Dr. Femi Kuti here — At the time it was a telemedicine-focused platform called Kangpe

🔦 Other deals

ALL EYES ON EGYPT

Thndr, an Egyptian trading & investment platform providing commission-free access to the Egyptian stock market and mutual funds, raised a $20M Series A co-led by Tiger Global, BECO Capital, and Prosus Ventures, with participation from new investors Base Capital and firstminute, and existing investors Endure Capital, 4DX Ventures, Raba Partnerships, and JIMCO — Thndr has amassed over 300,000 downloads since its late 2020 launch and accounts for over one-third of all new Egyptian exchange registrations
Nawy, an Egyptian online real estate platform, closed a $5M seed round led by the Sawiris family office — Since launch, over $200M worth of properties have been sold on Nawy’s platform; the company previously announced having raised a ‘seven-figure’ amount in Week 30 2021
BasiGo, a Kenyan electric mobility startup, raised a $4.3M seed round led by Novastar Ventures, with participation from Moxxie Ventures, Nimble Partners, Spring Ventures, Climate Capital, Third Derivative, & others — In addition to setting up an assembly plant in Kenya, BasiGo plans to offer electric buses to vehicle operators via a “pay-as-you-drive” financing solution; the $4.3M includes $930K raised 2021’s pre-seed
Mecho Autotech, a Nigerian vehicle repair and maintenance platform, raised a $2.15M seed round from Future Africa, HoaQ, Cathexis Ventures, V8 Capital, Silver Squid, and Tekedia Capital — The company has over 7,000 third-party mechanics on its platform and its clients include Tolaram Group, Moove, and Kobo 360
Duplo, a Nigerian B2B payments platform, raised a $1.3M pre-seed led by Oui Capital, with participation from MyAsia VC, Y Combinator, and others — Since launching its pilot three months ago, Duplo has processed over $380K while serving over 20 enterprise businesses
Sokna, an Egyptian end-to-end funeral service platform, raised a $1M seed round from Mentors Fund, SBX Capital, ACE & Company, Kabnoury Ventures, and a variety of angel investors — SOKNA has onboarded over 70 partner vendors and performed over 2,500 funerals since launch
Excel@Uni, a South African student support & bursary management platform, raised ~$300K from impact investor E Squared — The company will also receive non-financial support from E Squared’s Pathways Accelerator Programme for Allan Gray Fellows
ProXalys, a Senegalese platform digitizing the informal retail sector, raised a $150K pre-seed from venture builder Haskè Ventures — Founded in 2021, ProXalys currently has over 100 customers
Duplo, a Nigerian B2B payments platform, and Grey (formerly Aboki Africa), a Nigerian provider of virtual international bank accounts joined Y Combinator’s W22 batch — This takes the number of African startups in the batch to 13 so far; Grey and Duplo join the two other batch W22 startups announced last week and the nine listed in Week 3’s Week in Review
ChapChap, a Ugandan financial services platform targeting MSMEs with mobile money, payment, credit, & ERP services, raised an undisclosed amount from Nordic Impact Funds

M&A

Jiji, a Nigerian classifieds platform, acquired Ghanian classifieds platform Tonaton for an undisclosed amount — Jiji received ~10 million unique monthly visits and does “more than $10 billion” in GMV; it previously cquired OLX’s assets in Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, and Uganda
Transtura, a Nigerian mobility tech platform, acquired payments platform Wazo Money for an undisclosed amount — The acquisition will “accelerate the launch of [Transtura’s payment and marketplace solutions for the mobility sector,” according to CEO Vincent Adeoba
ParkUpp, a South African on-demand parking marketplace, was acquired for an undisclosed amount by real estate investment company Docklands Ventures

FUNDS

Knife Fund III, South African VC firm Knife Capital’s new fund, received $10M from the IFC — Fund III is targeting $50M to invest primarily in Series B startups in South Africa and beyond

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The Afridigest Week in Review is designed to inform Africa-interested founders, executives, investors, and observers. Share it with those interested in innovation across the continent. 🙏🏽

📚 Quick Hits

FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE

7 tips for founders when negotiating term sheets with VCs — 2048 Ventures MD, Alex Iskold, explains the dynamics of negotiating a term sheet
NFPs — Fred Wilson frames HR issues using a modern lens: "While most team members are 'fungible,' there are always a few 'non-fungible people' & identifying/retaining these NFPs can be incredibly important to the long-term success of the business"
The durability formula – how it will determine your startup’s future value — 96% of value in tech companies is created after Year 10, but to capture that value, you have to design for durability right at the beginning. NFX’s James Currier provides a durability framework for doing so
Here’s how venture capital needs to evolve in 2022 and beyond — “Surviving in the new venture landscape requires us to finally step away from the dated pattern-matching model and do something truly disruptive: Invest in the rising competition. … Put simply, emerging managers are the new founders, disrupting the venture space.”

Bonus:

The Maltese Falcoin (PDF) — An interesting & data-driven report on use
cases for cryptocurrencies and blockchains from Michael Cembalest
the Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy at JP Morgan Asset & Wealth Management
Putting ideas into words — Paul Graham’s latest on the value of writing: “If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it. And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial.”
Three lessons to learn from the early days of Nigeria's IROKO — More pieces like this or no? Let me know what you think. 🙏🏽

🙈 Visual of the week

OPPORTUNITIES TO RESHAPE THE HEALTH SECTOR

“Out-of-pocket (OOP) health spending in Africa remains excessively high compared to other continents.”

Source: Brookings Institute - Foresight Africa 2022 Report, Chapter 2 (PDF)

🕵️‍♀️ In case you missed it

NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

PODCASTS & AUDIO

Esigie Aguele, CEO of VerifyMe discusses open finance across Africa on the Africa Tech Summit Connects podcast
The Afrobility podcast covers how Nigerian mobility tech platform MAX provides transportation & delivery services across Africa
Iroko's Jason Njoku, Mr. Eazi, and others discuss the creator economy in the African context on The Flip podcast

ESSAYS

Google CEO Sundar Pichai writes ‘Investing in Africa's Digital Transformation’
Samora Kariuki, Director of Fintech at Sote, writes ‘The African Crypto Regulatory Hurdle'
Robert Yawe, Director of Synaptech Solutions, writes ‘Is Fuliza Safaricom’s Waterloo?’

INTERVIEWS

Meet the Investor: Zach George, Launch Africa (TechCabal)
Meet the Investor: Vusi Thembekwayo, MyGrowthFund Venture Partners (Disrupt Africa)

🗣️ Community Corner

I see you, friends!

Congrats to Kippa Co-Founder Jephtah Uche on his invitation to the Forbes Technology Council
Join Maya and the Ingressive Capital team — they’re looking to hire an Arabic- and/or French- speaker to focus on opportunities in Northern/Francophone Africa
Join Scott & the Mercy Corps Ventures team — they’re hiring a Head of Venture Platform
Oo Nwoye is looking for active angel/seed investors in Ghana, Kenya, and/or Sénégal — contact him directly

LA FIN

Thanks for reading 🙌🏽 If you want to chat, if you’re considering or already building something interesting in/for African markets, or if you’re (interested in) investing in African tech, feel free to reach out. Contact me on Whatsapp, slide in my Twitter DMs, or send me an email.

— Emeka

Afridigest