Afridigest Week in Review: Bug reporting is big business

+Understanding and navigating the market downturn +A question on Product-Market fit +Why build in Web3? +M&A is back on the menu +More

Emeka Ajene

May 23

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! As promised, we’re back to your regular weekly schedule and the most clicked link from last week was a16z’s framework for navigating down markets. (And thanks to those of you that reached out, it’s much appreciated 🙏🏽)

Seems like last week, the general chatter across various startup ecosystems worldwide involved the market downturn. Paraphrasing YC in its leaked letter to founders, “No one can predict how bad things will get, but they don’t look good“ — more on that in the newsletter below. And with that said, let’s get into Week 20.

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Week 20 2022: May 15 - 21

Bug squashing GIF — Credit: *Ahmed Shoura*

📰 Deal of the Week

FROM EGYPT TO THE WORLD

Instabug, an Egyptian provider of bug reporting & app performance monitoring software, raised a $46M Series B led by Insight Partners with participation from existing investor Accel, as well as new investors Forgepoint Capital and Endeavor; it previously raised a $5M Series A which we covered in Week 19 2020’s Week in Review.

Instabug raises $46 million Series B round

⛏️ Go deeper:

Traction: The company claims that its software sat, via SDK or otherwise, in 2.7 billion mobile devices worldwide in 2021, and that it processed 110 billion mobile sessions (up at least 20x from 2020), helping customers resolve 4.2 billion issues in the year.

New clients acquired in 2021 include DoorDash, Verizon, Qualtrics, Porsche, and Gojek which join existing ones such as Clubhouse and other well known names among the App Store Top 100 list and the list of Fortune 500 companies; Instabug grew its enterprise customers 10X in 2021, doubling its ARR.
How it works: The Instabug SDK gives developers real-time crash reporting and performance feedback and, for clients with pre-existing vendors, it is also compatible with a variety of other bug reporting platforms. The company operates a SaaS model, charging companies an annual subscription fee based on monthly active users/sessions.
A look back. Watch this pitch from Co-Founder & CEO Omar Gabr from 2013 — the year Instabug was founded: (Note: you may need headphones to hear the audio.)

🔦 Other deals

OTHER FUNDRAISES ACROSS THE CONTINENT

CarePoint (formerly Africa Health Holdings), an operator of tech-enabled healthcare facilities across Kenya, Ghana, Egypt, and Nigeria, raised a $10M Series B bridge round led by TRB Advisors with participation from Breyer Capital, Beyond Capital Ventures (BCV), M3, Inc, Asia Pacific Land/ Natural World Limited and others — This follows an $18M Series A round in Week 46 2021
Nile, a South African agritech platform connecting farmers to buyers of fresh produce, raised a ~$5.1M (ZAR83M) led by Naspers Foundry, with participation from Platform Investment Partners, Raba Capital, Base Capital, and others
Victory Farms, a Kenyan tech-enabled aquaculture platform & fish farm, raised $5M — VF serves over 15,000 market women via 54+ retail locations; it claims it experiences less than 1% spoilage due to its predictive data
Bamba, a digital bookkeeping, enterprise software, and payments platform for African MSMEs, raised a $3.2M seed round led by 468 Capital, with participation from Presight Ventures, Jigsaw VC, and others — Co-founded by Iroko co-founder Bastian Gotter, Bamba is currently in stealth mode with 30 merchants and has yet to officially launch
Topship, a Nigerian digital freight forwarding platform, raised a $2.5M seed round led by Flexport, with participation from Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Starling Ventures, Olive Tree Capital, Capital X, True Capital, and others — The company currently serves ~1,500 merchants
Doxx, an Egyptian digital healthcare platform connecting medical professionals and institutional healthcare providers, raised a $1.5M seed round led by Openner and Elevate — Founded in 2021, Doxx currently has 2600 doctors, 18 polyclinics, 52 pharmacies, 26 medical labs, and 10 scan centers on its platform
Kelo, a South African digital book rental edtech platform, raised ~$1.5M (ZAR23.5M) from Khulisani Ventures, the VC arm of Mineworkers Investment Company
Rentoza, a South African subscription platform for online electronics and appliances, raised ~$1.3M (ZAR20.5M) from Khulisani Ventures, the VC arm of Mineworkers Investment Company
Zuri Health, a Kenyan digital healthcare company which provides affordable healthcare via mobile, raised a $1.3M pre-seed from DOB Equity, Launch Africa and Founders Factory Africa, V8 Capital, Platform Capital, Villgro Africa, Asime Ventures, and the Salik Family Trust, and others — The company has partnered with 16+ mobile network operators across seven countries, over 300 doctors, 27 lab and diagnostic centers and 15 pharmacies
FlexPay, a Kenyan “save-now-pay-later” payment platform, raised an undisclosed amount from the Cairo Angels Syndicate Fund — FlexPay is Cairo Angels’ first investment in Africa outside of Egypt
RapidDeploy, a South African emergency response platform serving the American market, raised an undisclosed amount from Nedbank CIB, the corporate and investment banking division of the Nedbank Group
Blink Pharma, a Moroccan B2B healthcare marketplace, raised an undisclosed amount from Azur Innovation Fund

ADJACENT

Pillar, a fintech platform that provides immigrants moving to a new country with access to credit products, raised a $16.9M pre-seed co-led by Global Founders Capital and Backed VC — Among the company’s target customers are Africans who it says “migrate out of their countries more than any continent in the world”

M&A

Nigerian/pan-African automotive marketplace & solutions provider Autochek announced the acquisition of Moroccan online market for used vehicles Kifal — this is the latest example of the MENASSA (Middle East + North Africa + sub-Saharan Africa) trend we predicted at the start of the year
MooveBeta, a Kenyan voucher-driven e-commerce and fintech platform incubated at Adanian Labs, announced a merger with ImpalaPay, a Kenyan B2B digital and blockchain payment platform

STRATEGIC INVESTMENTS

Kenyan B2B e-commerce food distribution platform Twiga invested $10M into new subsidiary, Twiga Fresh, a commercial farming venture focused on fresh produce

FUNDRAISING

Mustard, an Africa-focused ‘venture agency’ & venture builder launched a $5M investment vehicle to build narrative-led technology ventures from the very start — Mustard plans to get fully involved as early as the idea formulation stage and provide its investors VC-type returns in half the time of traditional VC vehicles

A MESSAGE FROM INTELLENCE

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📚 Quick Hits

FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE

The three-body problem: Finding the new stable points in venture capital (PDF) — a presentation from QED’s Frank Rotman that leverages an old physics problem to explore changes happening in the startup, VC, and LP ecosystem, and propose how VC firms should adjust
Things you won’t regret — “Now is the time to set yourself and your business up for success in the uncertain year that lies ahead of us… Difficult business environments punish sloppy execution, and reward disciplined operations… In the words of Ronnie Coleman, ‘'everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but then nobody wanna lift no heavy ass weight.’ Well friends, it’s time to lift the weight.”

For more on understanding and navigating the current business environment, see the following:
- 39 moves to survive (& thrive) in a downturn: 2022 edition from NFX’s Pete Flint
- The fortune of failure from Equal Ventures’ Rick Zullo
- Reversion to the mean: the real long COVID from Founders Fund’s John Luttig
- All according to the [terrible] plan from Index Ventures’ Kyle Harrison
- Questions you should ask as the market melts down from Founder Collective’s Micah Rosenbloom
- Contextualizing the consumer correction from Redpoint’s Meera Clark
- How this ends from USV’s Fred Wilson
- The upside of a downturn from the Lightspeed team
- Operating during a downturn [Video] from Craft Ventures’ David Sacks and Jeff Fluhr
- Y Combinator’s letter to founders
- This Twitter thread from Lux Capital’s Josh Wolfe
- This Twitter thread from Carbon’s Ngozi Dozie
- This Twitter thread from TLCom’s Ido Sum
Why build in Web 3 — HBS Professor Scott Kominers and Koodos Co-Founder Jad Esber explore the new value propositions of Web 3 & why it matters in Harvard Business Review: “In Web 3, instead of platforms having full control of the underlying data, users typically own whatever content they have created, as well as digital objects they have purchased… This is a major shift, which could fundamentally change how digital companies operate: Users’ ability to take their data from one platform to another introduces new sources of competitive pressure, and likely requires firms to update their business strategies. If a platform isn’t creating enough value for its users, they might simply leave.”

Bonus:

If Tech fails to design for the most vulnerable, it fails us all — “Making better, safer, less harmful tech requires design based on the lived realities of those who are most marginalized. These ‘edge cases’ are frequently ignored as being outside of the scope of a typical user’s likely experiences. Yet they are powerful indicators for understanding the flaws in our technologies.”
Andreessen Horowitz’ 2022 state of crypto report (PDF) — Interesting report on trends in the crypto industry “for anyone who seeks to understand the evolution of the internet, and where we are on the journey towards a decentralized, community-owned-and-operated alternative to the centralized tech platforms of web2”
- Pair with: A16z’s ‘State of Crypto’ report, a rehash of bad crypto market pitches

🕵️‍♀️ In case you missed it

NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

ESSAYS/REPORTS

Adédèjì Ọlọ́wẹ̀, Lendsqr Founder & CEO writes ‘Being poor doesn't make you a bad borrower’
Pete Howson, senior lecturer at Northumbria University, Newcastle, writes ‘Cryptocurrencies: Africa’s new blood diamonds’
Antti Arponen, CEO of Pyypl writes ‘Why smartphones are key to unlocking financial inclusion in Middle East and Africa’

INTERVIEWS/PROFILES

🐤 Tweet of the Week

A question from GetEquity’s Jude Dike that sparked some interesting responses:

Polysaccharide Patriach @bigbrutha_

How do you even know you’ve hit product market fit? Are there specific metrics to consider?

Runner up: this now deleted reminder from Kingdom’s Samuel Akinosho that integrity and accountability matter

🗣️ Community Corner

Join Peter Oriaifo and the Oui Capital team — they’re hiring an Investment Associate
Congrats to Dr. Dotun Olowoporoku who joins the Ventures Platform team as a Venture Partner
Attention investors: Stone Atwine and the Eversend team are in fundraising mode — “In 2021, we processed $230M up from $5 million in 2020 and $800K in our first year of 2019. We hit our goal of sustainability last year, and we are entering our growth and expansion phase in 2022”

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LA FIN

Thanks for reading 🙌🏽 Send me your news, comments, questions, etc. via Whatsapp, Twitter DM, or email, and feel free to reach out if you just want to chat. 🙏🏽

Thanks also to our sponsor intellence for today’s Week in Review — click here or email hello@intellence.co to get started building your content flywheel and intelligent influence strategy.

— Emeka

Afridigest