FirstCheck Africa, a female-focused Angel fund co-founded by Eloho Omame & Odunayo Eweniyi, has announced its first investments in four female-founded companies – Foondamate (South Africa), Healthtracka (Nigeria), Tushop (Kenya), and Zoie Health (South Africa). It is investing $25,000 in each of these four companies.
Launched in January 2021, FirstCheck Africa was created “to invest “ridiculously early” and open door for female founders, and to help women invest in tech.”
According to the company, “In 2020, women-led companies received only 2.3% of over $300B in global VC funding, down from 2.7% in 2019. In 2019, only 0.27% went to Black women, and so far, in 2021, women-led companies have received just 1.6% of global VC funding. Closer to home, depending on which source you trust and how it gets measured, up to 5% of Africa’s $1.4B in early-stage funding in 2020 went to startups with women on the co-founding team.”
FirstCheck Africa believes that the numbers are atrocious and they seek to change this story.
The company said that in the last six months, it received over 200 applications from female founders and startups with diverse teams. It also stated that it witnessed almost 100 pitches from founders building in agriculture, clean energy, fintech, education, healthcare and retail, amongst others; and leveraging technology like machine learning & AI to build differentiated propositions.
FirstCheck says it intends to invest in six companies this year and the first four it has invested in, are as follows:
- Healthtracka (Nigeria) – Led by Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson, Healthtracka is a digital health platform that allows users to order laboratory tests from the privacy of home, receive fast, accurate test results and book virtual 1-on-1 doctors’ reviews.
- Tushop (Kenya) – Led by Cathy Chepkemboi, Tushop is a social commerce company that aggregates community-level demand for groceries to help its end-customers access better prices and convenient delivery
- Foondamate (South Africa) – Led by Dacod Magagula & Tao Boyle, Foondamate helps students with limited internet access study online through low-data platforms like WhatsApp.
- Zoie Health (South Africa) – Led by Thato Schermer & Nonhlanhla Sitole, Zoie Health is a digital health & wellness platform that facilitates virtual consults, home consults and delivery of contraceptive & health test kits for women and the people they love
FirstCheck Africa says that “by investing “ridiculously early” in these companies’ lifecycles (and the lifecycles of future portfolio companies), it is gearing up to play a meaningful role in supporting their growth with:
- Expertise: Our support includes regular office hours, peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, working sessions with functional experts, and more. We have a growing network of mission-aligned experts that offer mentoring, advice and network connectivity to support our founders as their startups scale.
- Fundraising: We’re constantly trying to clear our portfolio companies’ paths to follow-on funding, and are getting to work with our founders on fundraising support & strategy for successful seed rounds. We’re giving practical, tactical feedback, helping with decks and pitch prep, and making meaningful investor introductions on the strength of the “FirstCheck Africa seal of approval”.
- Visibility & Community: We host regular virtual events that are designed to add value to our founders while building a robust community of cheerleaders around FirstCheck Africa. We use our events as an opportunity to put our founders first by leveraging our increasingly powerful platform to amplify their missions and their growth. Long-term, with an army of mission-aligned founders & operators around FirstCheck Africa, we believe that we are better able to support the needs of our founders.”
We should be expecting at least two more investments before the end of the year.
