2020 — What a year!

2020 has been an unprecedented year with the spread of the COVID 19 Pandemic and the pivotal peaceful #ENDSARS protests to demand an end to police brutality and extrajudicial killings in Nigeria. Sadly these protests were marred by violent riots and the brutal killing of innocent young Nigerians.

May their memory remain indelible in our hearts and minds.

Confounding as they are, the events of this year, especially the COVID 19 pandemic have further strengthened the need for a robust digital ecosystem in Africa, as individuals are adopting technology at a faster pace, while businesses are having to reinvent how they operate in a digital-first world. The world has changed forever.

This pandemic and its 2nd order effects further solidified our conviction around the internet and software in Africa; we believe it would impact every sector positively, increase efficiency and productivity and boost economic growth across the continent. As the GDP of the internet expands across Africa, we would be right there at the centre, supporting and funding the most ambitious founders blazing the trail.

The year also put our processes to the test, but we welcomed this challenge. We stress-tested our remote working policy and the viability of executing deals virtually. There were some challenges at the start such as; finding the right collaboration tool (we settled on Notion), coordinating schedules, digging in to really get to know founders as much as we could, and executing our dry jokes via Zoom, but we worked our way through them. With the commitment of our team, investors, partners, and founders, we were able to clear this hurdle and achieve new milestones successfully.

At the start of the year, we iterated our investment thesis through the lens of COVID to guide our activities for the future. We will continue to support innovative founders who are solving some of the most challenging problems across Africa in Financial Services and Insurance, Life Science and Health Tech, Edtech and Digital talent accelerators, Enterprise SaaS, Digital Infrastructure Plays, AgriTech and Food security.

With our thesis as our guide, we set out and got busy. We welcomed a group of notable startups to our portfolio. Our portfolio now includes the following and another still in stealth mode:

• Send — a digital freight forwarding and courier service for African businesses
• Seamless HR — an easy to use, robust cloud-based HR management software that handles all human resource processes
• FunnelJoy — a landing page and sales funnel builder for marketers and entrepreneurs
• Tambua Health — which is using lung sound analysis to transform the diagnosis and treatment of respiratory diseases globally.
• Brass — a 100% online digital bank for SMBs
• Gradely — a platform that leverages artificial intelligence and data to help parents and schools plug learning gaps in real-time
• Talent City- a network of charter cities focused on creating technology-enabled jobs within a free trade zone with its regulation and bylaws
• Rise Capital — a wealth management platform that allows individuals to make dollar-denominated investments in Nigeria
• Marketforce 360 — enables MCG companies & financial service providers to manage their field sales activities and grow their distribution channels
• Mono — a financial API and One-Click Login for the Internet

including a few unannounced deals

Our community of portfolio founders particularly deserve commendation as they crossed many hurdles, pivoted when they had to, offered direct solutions to the pandemic, and actively supported their community of employees and customers through the years difficulties — showing truly uncommon resilience.

To mention but a few; MDaaS launched; Sentinel X, a health surveillance platform, and a COVID-19 Mass Testing Guide. Printivo launched its line of #COVID19 PPE products. For every 5 face masks sold, they gave out 1 unit to non-front line workers like cleaners and traffic wardens. In a bid to support small businesses, Paystack churned out new features and also announced a direct payment integration with Wix to help with the new demand of doing business online. Send deployed its platform to optimize logistics via the aggregation of Covid related supplies. While Gerocare built a self-testing portal and delivered PPE kits for free to the elderly.

Led by our foundation at Ventures Platform, we launched two initiatives;

• The COVID-19 Innovation Challenge(CIC) — With support from the Nigerian Center for Disease Control (NCDC) and the Lagos State Government we supported 7 startups, who rolled out solutions and platforms to mitigate the rapid spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria. Through CIC, participating startups received $21,000, business advisory, mentorship, and networking support.
• Nigeria Impact Startup Relief Facility (NISRF). Working with Acumen, and with support from LoftyInc, we disbursed grants in a total of $110,000 to 10 qualifying high-growth and impact-driven startups, to help them remain viable and resilient through the COVID-19 crisis.

Thankfully 2020 didn’t end without the pivotal announcement by Stripe of their acquisition of Paystack, giving us a nice exit on our early investment. We are excited to see what the union of Stripe and Paystack will produce in the payment space, and we salute the excellence and dedication of the Paytsack founders’ Shola & Ezra as well as their outstanding team.

In all, this year taught us a lot as humans and as a firm, for that we remain grateful.

But this is just the beginning, VP is revving up for an even bigger 2021 and so over the holidays or in the new year when you need a partner who has your back and shares your vision, let’s talk.

Happy holidays.