Kenya-based Seedstars Africa Ventures has announced a new appointment – Bruce Nsereko-Lule, the company’s General Partner.
The pan-African early-stage fund for startups in a press release today, said that Nsereko-Lule will help to deploy more capital and provide the much-needed technical support for founders across the continent.
This is just after the recent launching of Seedstars International ventures, the startup’s second emerging market seed stage fund.
Bruce is an active contributor to the venture capital ecosystem in the continent. With over 11 years of experience in venture capital and investment banking across frontier and emerging markets, he has led early-stage investments of several million dollars from African and international funds to more than 30 African startups, many of which have since developed into industry leaders and subsequently raised close to USD 500 million.
Prior to joining the fund, Nsereko-Lule was previously the founding investment principal of Chandaria Capital, a Kenya-based VC fund founded in 2017 to serve as the investment vehicle of the Chandaria Industries. He had previously worked as an investment banker in the U.K.
During his time at Chandaria Capital, Nsereko-Lule says they invested millions of dollars in 38 startups, initially starting with Kenya before entering other African and emerging markets in South America and Asia.
By the end of his tenure, the sector-agnostic fund had completed 52 transactions (including follow-on investments) with startups such as Tushop, Jumba, Wasoko, Kobo360, TradeDepot, Carry1st, Shara, and Chari.
“I was in charge of operations, and it was an exciting journey – it was something completely new, but I had my financial background. We decided to be a sector-agnostic fund from day one, and that was because we saw multiple investment opportunities across the continent,” he said.
At Seedstars Africa Ventures, Nsereko-Lule plans to continue backing founders in the continent at even a greater scale, as he is convinced that there are many great startups in Africa that are struggling to get funding.
Seedstars Africa Ventures – which is part of Seedstars Group, an accelerator and VC that is active globally in over 30 emerging markets – provides early-stage capital of up to $2 million in seed and Series A rounds. The fund counts the French equity firm LBO France among its limited partners, and has, so far, invested over $5 million in five startups, including Kenya’s ISP Poa Internet and Nigeria’s grid management SaaS for electricity distribution utilities Beacon Power Services, since it was founded in 2020.
The fund, which plans to deploy more capital over the next few months, will tap Nsereko-Lule’s vast experience, and the networks he has gained over the years as an active venture capitalist in Africa.
“We will be putting in an initial check and basically, we will lead the round. And then we will keep funding until the business has reached proper growth, and probably hit profitability and has opportunities to exit and further scale,” said Nsereko-Lule, who has joined Tamim El Zein, and Maxime Bouan, the fund’s other general partners.
