Samurai Incubate Inc, a venture capital firm based in Tokyo, has announced that it has closed its dedicated Africa fund after raising 2.06 billion yen (~ $18 million).
In January 2020, Samurai announced a second fund called the “Samurai Africa 2nd General Partnership”. The now-closed fund will focus on startups in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa. It has now added Egypt as one of its focus countries.
Despite the COVID crisis, the firm kept investing and a total of 54 corporate and individual investors participated. The raised amount surpassed the targeted amount of 2 billion yen ($18.4 million).
This is not Samurai’s first fund for African investments. The firm created an Africa fund in 2018 and already has 26 African startups on its portfolio including Eden, Evolve Credit, Wallets, mPost, Shyft Energy Solutions and Swipe2Pay.
In these countries, Samurai will target investments in fintech, insurtech, healthcare, commerce, energy, agritech, mobility and entertainment. Ticket sizes will range between $50,000 and $800,000 and will be for startups between pre-seed and Series A stages.
Kentaro Sakakibara founded Samurai Incubate, and in 2018, the firm began investing in Africa by establishing a subsidiary called Leapfrog Ventures. From August 2018, Samurai Incubate invested $2.5 million in 20 African startups via the newly established firm. Then in June 2019, renamed itself Samurai Incubate Africa.
