In this issue of the Weekly Deals Digest, Ghana dominates the African space, following MEST’s funding for startups in its graduating class of entrepreneurs. Tracxn data shows that enterprise applications received the most funding, compared to their gig economy and consumer counterparts.
India continues to dominate the weekly deals digest emerging markets space, competing with Brazil for 5 out of six deals highlighted in this issue. Mukesh Ambani’s retail giant raked in $754 million from KKR, adding to an earlier $1.02 billion from Silverlake.
Globally, American enterprise applications and infrastructure companies stole the show, accounting for more than half of the global deals highlighted in this issue.
Top Venture Deals in Africa
Nairobi based physical address generation system OkHi raised $1.78 million from London’s Angel Investment Network. The startup will use the funding to expand its reach across African countries.
Nigeria’s Indicina Technologies raised $0.15 million from Itanna, the venture capital arm of Honeywell Group. The credit risk management solutions company will use the funding to expand within Nigeria and develop its tech platform.
Ghana’s Boxconn, an online platform providing hyperlocal delivery services, raised $0.1 million from the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), in a seed funding round. This funding round was part of MEST’s investment in its graduating class of entrepreneurs. Other startups which received similar funding in the MEST-led seed round include Kenya’s Eleka, a provider of customer service experience and Ghanian Heny, an online food delivery platform and Ghana’s KPI Lens, a provider of cloud-based visualization and dashboarding services.
Top Venture Deals in Emerging Markets
In India, KKR invested $754.4 million in Reliance Retail in exchange for 1.28% stake in India’s largest retailer. The investment comes barely a week after Silverlake pumped $1.02 billion into the company.
Hopscotch, an Indian flash sales site for mom and babycare products raised $ 25 million from Wei Yan, LionRock Capital and Rise capital.
Brazil’s Vtex, an end to end e-commerce solution for brands and retailers, raised $225 million from SoftBank Group, Tiger Global Management, Lone Pine Capital, Constellation Endeavour catalyst and two other investors. The Series D funding round pushes its valuation to $1.7 billion, bringing the company closer to achieving its mission to accelerate digital commerce transformation.
Top Venture Deals Globally
Northvolt, a Swedish builder of Lithium-Ion battery for electric vehicles raised $600 million from Goldman Sachs, Volkswagen, Baillie Gifford, Scania, and three other investors. Northvolt will invest the finances in expanding its production capacity, and drive R&D. The company is also planning to establish a 150Gwh manufacturing capacity in Europe in the next ten years, as the demand for EV batteries continues to rise.
Robinhood, a U.S based trading platform for multiple assets raised $460 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital and two other investors. Funding from the Series G round will support its core products, customer experience and its new offerings.
U.S’ XtalPi, a developer of tools to predict the crystal structure of drugs, raised $318.8 million to drive its pharmaceutical R&D process, focusing on algorithms, data, and computing power to assist in the drug discovery process. The funding round was led by SoftBank Vission Fund, People’s Insurance company of China, Morningside Venture capital and 11 other investors.
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