Ingressive invests $250,000 in three Nigerian startups
Daniel Iyanda
Ingressive Capital—an early stage venture capital firm—has cut three Nigerian startups a cheque of $250,000 (₦90.3 million).
Two of the startups are FunnelJoy and Vesicash. They received the cheque last month as part of their seed round. FunnelJoy—a product of Kessington Global Synergy (Kessintech)—is a web page and sales funnel builder and Vesicash is an escrow service.
Vesicash was co-founded by Ibrahim Oladele (CEO) and Tomisin Adeshiyan (CPO) in 2018, and Kessintech (FunnelJoy) was founded by Samuel Okwuada in 2017.
In addition to receiving funding from Ingressive Capital, FunnelJoy had also received investment from Ventures Platform in the second quarter of 2019.
By investing in three startups, Ingressive Capital has increased the number of companies in its portfolio to 12. Notable among its portfolio companies are Paystack, TQ Trivia, Awabike, Ogavenue, and 54gene.
The Lagos-based VC firm invests between $100,000 (₦36.2 million) and $200,000 (₦72.5 million) in pre-seed and seed round of tech startups based in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Uwem Uwemakpan, the director of funds operations, said Ingressive Capital invested in these startups because they have "a clear business model, they are targeting a scalable market, and the founders and team are bright, hungry and understand the market."
The valuation of these comapnies is from $250,000 to $2 million. We will go up to $7.5 million opportunistically, but we target earlier stage and want to be one of the first cheques into the company.
Director of Fund Operations at Ingressive Capital, Uwem Uwemakpan
Ingressive Capital is the venture arm of Ingressive, a market entry and market operations firm for local and global enterprises seeking expansion in Africa. Founded by Maya Horgan-Famodu, Ingressive facilitates the distribution of resources throughout the African tech community by looking beyond the hurdles and focusing on the full picture of success within the African tech community.
"Ingressive Capital serves as a feeder fund for African technology companies," Uwem said. "80% of our limited partners run later stage investment vehicles, while 20% run Africa's traditional billion dollar industries."
We invest in tech-enabled businesses so we aren't really sector specific. These companies must, however, meet certain criteria such as be based in Sub-Saharan Africa or Egypt, have launched and have initial traction, including revenue and users, have a technical industry talent on the team, and have a clear business model.
Uwem Uwemakpan, fund operations at Ingressive Capital
FunnelJoy, Send and Vesicash refused to comment on the funding report as of press time. "I will need to confirm with Ventures Platform," Samuel Okwuada, CEO of Kessington Global Synergy, said.