Kenyan cloud startup Angani has closed a seed funding rounding, with the venture planning to take the East African cloud market by the end of 2015.
The funding round was led by Invested Development, with participation from Africa’s Talking, Savannah Fund, and Africa Angels Network. The value of the funding has not been disclosed.
Angani is the first East African fully automated public cloud infrastructure company; with the startup focusing primarily on the small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) market, as well as the financial services and media industries.
“This funding proves it is possible to build an internationally attractive infrastructure business in Africa,” said Phares Kariuki, chief executive officer (CEO) of Angani.
“In the coming year we intend to leverage this capital towards our goal of handling Africa’s data by helping enterprise businesses adopt to the cloud as well as providing a platform service for local innovation such as our Digital Media Broadcasting solution. Based on current predictions we intend to be East Africa wide by 2015.”
Angani hopes to cater for the growth in demand for data hosting and processing capacity/infrastructure expected across Africa over the next five years.
While currently, most Kenyan applications and web content are hosted remotely – usually in the USA and Europe -; Angani’s aim is to change this, providing local hosting and infrastructure options. Shifting to local hosting presents a range of benefits to companies, such as lower access latency, increased throughput and decreased operational costs.
“Angani is an attractive proposition because it provides direct benefit to the firm’s existing portfolio companies that are operating in the East African region. Globally, it’s a competitive space, but the specific local needs for East African remain underserved, creating a significant opportunity for impact,” said Miguel Granier, founder and managing director of Invested Development.
Invested Development has made a number of investments across Africa to date, including Ugandan startup SolarNow, as well as Kenya’s BRCK; alongside a number of other investments in Tanzania, Nigeria and South Africa.
Invested Development recently told Disrupt Africa: “It’s hard to be in Africa and not see business opportunities to solve problems everyday.”
