The idea of having a whole family of seed funds rather than one big pool of capital continues to resonate with investors and serve the needs of entrepreneurs. Case in point, the new Sanitation fund, and it’s $20,000 revenue-based loan to JOELEX. The impetus of this fund was rather simple. A small handful of investors saw JOELEX’s pitch on Demo Day (below), talked to Joel, and...
From Beyond Capital: In March, Ben Grozier, our Associate and member of the Beyond Capital Investment Team, met a smallholder farmer working a two acre plot of land in rural Tanzania, who was hoping to sell enough produce this season to feed, clothe, and educate his family. This farmer’s produce cannot easily be brought to market without waste or spoilage, and so he struggles to make a...
The fledglings are back in Lima, from Monday, July 3rd through Friday, September 1st. Seven exciting startups from five different countries: AESA Foods grows bees in Nicaragua and sells honey and other bee-related products. Nicaragua. www.facebook.com/pg/AESAFOODS AMIntegrated Aerial radically improves agricultural yields in Nigeria and beyond through the use of aerial robotics in crop dusting...
How can one company solve the problems of poverty, hunger, and food safety and all it does is grow fresh fruits and vegetables. Golden Cat is a two year old mission-driven, company doing just that, in Rwanda. Rwanda is a poor, but quickly developing country. 80% of the population are smallholder farmers. Half of the 11 million people are under the age of 18. In order to feed this growing...
Africa Business Radio deems itself a media platform with a purpose, driven to provide content that offers success for business across Africa. One of the 6 startups from Fledge9, based in Johannesburg, South Africa, founder Soji Akinlabi has grown this business from just 1 streaming radio show two years ago to over 15 shows today. Each show strives to ask the question: How will this information...
Talking about doing your business, Americans take for granted how simple it is to “do your business”, flush, and get on with the day? Not the case in Uganda. The dirty truth is that only 6% of 36 million Ugandans have access to safe, clean sanitation facilities. The 3 million people in Kampala share just 1,000 flushable toilets. Fledge9 introduces Joelex, a Ugandan startup with a mission to not...
One of the exciting outcomes from Fledge is the discovery of a new, better business model that an entrepreneur never gave a second thought. For Fledge9, this extra exciting, as the Biogen Kenya applied four times with a business making biodiesel, and we fully expected them to leave the program with that business. Five weeks later, we have a new name, Zijani, a new logo, but more importantly, a...
How Fledge helps startups varies from company to company. One of the best stories from Fledge9 is BioGen Kenya. They applied (three times) with a plan to turn used cooking oil into biodiesel. They launched and are operating that business in Nairobi, expecting to come to Fledge to learn how to raise money to expand. Digging into the opportunity, we learned that last year Nairobi passed a law...
The seventh session of Fledge has started. Seven new teams hailing from five countries: Uganda, Malawi, Tanzania, the Philippines, and the United States. Seven more mission-driven, for-profit fledgling companies, with big dreams. African Chicken is a distributed grower of chickens in Tanzania, working with dozens of smallholder women farmers, providing them chicks, then aggregating and...