Antler East Africa, the East African office of global Venture Capital and Builder Antler announced that it has closed $13.5 million in a funding round to invest in startups in the region. Participants in the raise include Baillie Gifford, a well-known Tesla backer; family offices such as Canica. IFC invested $1.5 million investment while $500,000 came from the Women’s Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative
Founded in Singapore in 2017 by a team of experienced entrepreneurs, investors and company builders including CEO, Magnus Grimeland, Antler is a global early-stage VC enabling and investing in the world’s most exceptional people.
The East African office was launched in August 2019 and is currently led by a team of women including partners Selam Kebede, Melalite Ayenew and Marie Nielsen and program manager Joana Borges.
To date, Antler East Africa has had five cohorts with 153 founders passing through its accelerator programs and it has so far made 14 investments including AIfluence, Marketforce-subsidiary Digiduka and Honeycoin.
Antler East Africa follows the approach like the parent body in that it invests in startups looking for pre-seed to Series C funding. They accept founders startups starting from scratch and also invest in already formed teams that need capital to scale.
Though the firm is sector agnostic, it primarily focuses on startups that solves problems in climate tech, agritech and fintech. Over the next three years, Antler East Africa intends to invest in 35 new startups from pre-seed to Series A. There’s also an arrangement for the global Antler fund to follow up on some rounds all the way to Series C.
