Vandease Raises $30 Million
Online B2B marketplace for restaurants and other food businesses; Vendease just raised $30 million in an equity and debt funding round after a $3.2 million Seed round last October.
The three-year-old B2B Food startup was founded by Tunde Kara, Olumide Fayankin, Gatumi Aliyu and Wale Oyepeju.
Lagos-based Vandease, which is a Y Combinator-backed startup allows restaurants in Africa to buy supplies, access financial services and power their business operations via a digital platform.
The startup’s $30 million raise is a combination of a $20 million Series A equity round co-led by two of the biggest Africa-focused funds, TLco and Partech, in a rare joint investment. And a $10 million debt round raised from the local finance market.
The equity round also included investors like VentureSouq, Hustle fund, Hack VC, GFR Fund, Kube VC, Magic Fund and Kairos Angels, who re-invested after participating in the previous round.
This current funding will be used to consolidate its growth and operations in Nigeria and Ghana, and the home services startup also kick off its expansion plans in Africa. Boost Vendease’s Buy-Now-Pay-Later offering, which allows restaurant owners access to working capital.
And support the delivery of these services to more restaurants and food businesses across Africa, as well as the development of new solutions and services, to drive growth across the food value chain.
Vendease sees itself as a digital procurement engine that makes it easier for restaurants to buy food supplies at considerably cheaper rates than open market prices, with guaranteed 12-hour delivery.
The startup currently operates in eight cities across Nigeria and Ghana.
This restaurant B2B marketplace claims to have moved more than 400,000 metric tonnes of food through its platform and has seen 3x growth in the number of users on its platform and 5x growth in its revenue over the last 12 months.
Vendease users have also accessed more than $12 million worth of inventory via its embedded finance product.
SweepSouth Raises $11m
South African-based Online home and business cleaning services platform, SwepSouth has raised an $11 million investment round led by Alitheia IDF (AIF) a gender-lens private equity fund.
The existing investors in SweepSouth are Naspers Foundry, The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, and Futuregrowth Asset Management who participated in this new round, along with new investors Endeavor Catalyst, Endeavor’s Harvest Fund II, Caruso Ventures and E4E Africa.
SweepSouth was started eight years ago by Aisha Pandor and Alen Ribic.
The startup operates in Africa’s four key tech-centric economies-South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Egypt.
This new funding will help the home services startup hire people in South Africa, add new services in existing markets and acquire other firms.
Last year SouthSweep acquired Egypt’s FilKhedma last year for an undisclosed amount.
Mazaya
Egyptian B2B eCommerce marketplace for electronics, Mazaya, also completed a $5 million pre-seed funding round led by Raya Trade & Distribution, a subsidiary of Raya Holding for Financial Investments.
With this funding, Mazaya will scale its operations in Egypt and expand into new markets and potentially into other verticals.
Mazaya launched last year and has since worked with over 6,000 retailers, fulfilled 30,000 orders achieving a gross merchandise value of $15 million to date, and currently has over 1,000 SKUs on its platform.
Amir Aboul Fotouh, Mazaya co-founder & head of operations, said:
“The funds raised will allow us to quickly scale our operations and expand to other markets beyond Egypt, we have plans to launch our services in Nigeria before this year-end.”
The B2B e-Commerce platform plans to offer financial services to its product offerings and support retailers to help them scale their business by offering various credit facilities and flexible payment terms based on their payment history.
InGame Sports
Egyptian gaming startup InGame Sports has secured over $1 million in a pre-Seed round that is a combination of grants and support resources, led by Openner, with participation from Sports Radar and angel investors.
Launched in 2021, InGame is a football mobile game led by Mohab El Tawila.
The startup will use the money to expand into multiple countries, introduce add-ons to the existing product under Web3 tech stack and incorporate blockchain technology as part of the offering.
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