Aidi Africa, an African Venture builder run by Tolulope Obademi – its portfolio manager, has entered into a partnership with Amazon Web Services’ Activate (an arm of AWS that supports early businesses) to upgrade early-stage African startups to reach a status that sets them ready for investors and investment partnerships.
Positioning itself as an African founder-focused accelerator, Aidi teamed up with Amazon Web Service last month to kick-start a 4-week program to get African startup markets to get ready for investors. During the course of the program, these companies were exposed to diverse angles of training from other successful industry veterans and founders around key areas ranging from culture building, product scaling and the art of fundraising.
The journey so far, AIDI has been able to support venture companies in their portfolio, to journey through become major global accelerators. One notable feat is raising over $8 million in funding, all values running to over $70 Million.
Through its angel syndicates, AIDI Africa has been able to provide support to industry-leading startups namely Termii (YC W20), Payhippo (YC W21), Dash (Techstars 21), Raise (500 Startsups 21), Bumpa, Cova, Nigenius and Swipe. Founded in 2019, the venture builder includes a group of successful founders in the African investment ecosystem. The likes of: Deborah Gbolade from Aidi Ventures, Ham Serungoji from ChipperCash, Emmanuel Gbolade from Termii, Tayo Ovoisu from Paga, Francis Osifo from 54gene, Francis Sanni from Magic and Emmanuel Okeleji from Seamless HR.
In the present summer batch, about 21 companies are involved:
Zemo – A Kenyan-based fintech that allows businesses to eliminate wasteful spending, as well as be able to access cashflow credit using its credit card service.
Moni – Still a fintech solution, this venture capital is a lending platform for mobile money agent which uses a social accountability model to provide agents with float and build their credit history.
MediSpark – A Health-tech startup that builds solutions that connect businesses in the African health sector.
Vite– a logistics platform that makes access to transport services easy and affordable. Delivery and transport services are provided across a 70+ tier 1 and 2 underserved cities in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), beginning with Mauritius.
On the way forward, and creating progressive strides, Obademi says the firm is looking to make accelerator programs hold twice every year, while focusing on establishing partnerships between its portfolio community and large corporates, both within African and across Silicon Valley.
Aside AWS, there are other bodies that have thrown in their support towards Aidi’s initiative: Hatch, FirstBase, Brex and Mercury are just a few.
