Founders Factory Africa has secured an additional US$114 million in funding from Mastercard Foundation and Johnson & Johnson to scale its model to better serve founders across the African tech ecosystem.
Founders Factory, which originally launched in London in 2015 and has already built more than 70 startups, launched African operations in Johannesburg in 2018, from where it plans to design, build and scale 140 disruptive tech startups across Africa.
The company brought its model to Africa in partnership with Standard Bank, and subsequently secured backing from Netcare to provide a platform for entrepreneurs to build and scale e-health startups across Africa and Small Foundation to invest in agri-tech.
The additional US$114 million in funding support from the Mastercard Foundation and Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures, an impact fund within the Johnson & Johnson Foundation, will enable Founders Factory Africa to scale its model and better serve technology-led startups and founders across the African continent.
“We are excited to have new and dynamic funding, which follows on from previous investments into Founders Factory Africa by Standard Bank Group, Small Foundation and Netcare Group,” said Alina Truhina, co-founder of Founders Factory Africa.
Since its inception, Founders Factory Africa has catalysed the trajectory of over 55 tech startups across the continent. The additional funding affirms Founders Factory Africa’s hybrid investment model of combining capital and operational support and will help the early-stage investor further iterate this model by becoming sector-agnostic in its investment with founders who prioritise business fundamentals and will also double down on addressing the gender imbalance in the ecosystem.
It will also broaden its capital investment offering to include non-dilutive capital, supporting the continent’s need for different capital deployment types across the venture maturity curve, as well as strengthen Founders Factory Africa’s internal capacity to continue to provide its portfolio of start-ups with the best venture-building support on the continent.
“Come build with us,” said Founders Factory Africa CEO, Bongani Sithole. “Moving Africa forward requires more of us to support tech-driven, solution-oriented ventures that have the potential to scale and make an impact at speed. Our role as Founders Factory Africa is to provide founders with the funding, knowledge, and hands-on venture building support they need to achieve commercial success and create outsized, systematic impact.”
