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TLcom, the Africa-focused venture capital firm, has announced a first close of $70 million for its $150 million Africa-focused tech fund. The first close is in line with the total size of TLcom’s TIDE Africa Fund closed in 2020, according to the fund that invests in African fintech, mobility, agriculture, healthcare, education and ecommerce.

The second fund witnessed the participation of Allianz, the world’s largest insurance company, through AfricaGrow, its joint venture with DEG Impact (German Investment Corporation), as well as a host of new and returning investors including Bertelsmann, King Philanthropies, the TLcom team and FBNQuest from the private sector, and major DFIs such as CDC Group (the UK's development finance institution), IFC, Proparco and Swedfund.

With its new fund, TLcom said it will expand its existing focus on fast-growth, tech-enabled African startups to Egypt, as well as strengthen its long-standing presence across East and West Africa. With ticket sizes ranging from $500,000 - $15 million, TLcom expects to add an additional 20 early-stage startups to its portfolio with an emphasis on Seed and Series A stages.

Launched in 1999, TLcom currently has in excess of $350 million worth of funds under management across primary and secondary funds and boasts one of the leading portfolios in African tech, featuring 12 startups including Andela, Ajua, Autochek, Ilara Health, Kobo360, Okra, Pula, Seamless HR, Shara, Terragon Group, Twiga Foods and uLesson.

The company’s highly experienced and growing team - which is also 50 percent female at a senior leadership level - consists of Founder and Managing Partner Maurizio Caio based in Kenya, Senior Partner Omobola Johnson based in Nigeria, and Partners Andreata Muforo in Kenya, and Ido Sum in the UK. With its offices based in Kenya, Nigeria as well as the UK, TLcom invests across all stages of the venture capital cycle and manages a broad portfolio of tech-enabled startups addressing a range of sectors including agriculture, education, data analytics and logistics.

Speaking on the launch of the new fund, Maurizio Caio, Nairobi-based Founder and Managing Partner at TLcom, says, “Since the closing of our previous fund, African tech has secured more high-value financing rounds, exits and M&As than ever before and this is only just the beginning. It is becoming increasingly evident that our sector has broken into a new era of maturity driven by very strong business fundamentals that African founders are demonstrating not only in the fintech space, but across a huge number of the continent’s largely underserved markets.”

The entrepreneurs supported by the TIDE Africa Fund have achieved traction in recent years with total revenues across its portfolio growing 3x since investment, over 2,300 jobs created and significant up-rounds secured with participation from leading global investors including Softbank, Owl Ventures and Index Ventures, TLcom said. To-date, TLcom’s portfolio companies have raised more than half a billion dollars of capital in addition to funding issued by the TIDE Africa Fund and on average, new investments secured from these startups were priced at 5x the valuation of the initial investment received from TLcom.

In 2021, the investor also announced the first unicorn in its portfolio following Andela’s $200 million Series E funding at a valuation of $1.5 billion.