Startups Profile

Founded in 2018 by Dane and Bastiat Viljoen, Troygold digitizes gold bullion and Krugerrands and then allows customers to buy, sell, spend, and borrow against their gold.  Vaulted gold bars or coins with serial numbers are digitized via Troygold’s system, offering whole or fractional ownership.  Gold is directly allocated, and customers receive an ownership certificate […]

Sendmarc startup was launched by CEO Sam Hutchinson, Keith Thompson, and Sacha Matulovich in 2020 off the back of selling their former startup: a communication platform that allowed businesses to send, deliver, and track email and SMS communications.  With Sendmarc, they sought to solve email impersonation issues their former clients faced, thereby making the internet

Klasha is a technology company that builds cross-border commerce solutions for Africa.  Klasha Business allows international merchants to accept payments from Africa using African money methods and currencies with payouts in hard currencies.  B2B African merchants can also send money cross-border to different parts of the world in G20 and hard currencies.  Klasha Personal allows

Founded in 2017, Complete Farmer allows users to own shares in tech-enabled farms. Over the past three years, it has implemented a crowd-farming model with a total of 7,200 acres of production serving commodities to Asia, Europe, and the rest of the world. Complete Farmer’s platform currently supports over 2,000 acres of farmland across six

Founded in 2017 by Simon Schwall (a French national) and Shehzad Lokhandwall (an Indian national), OKO develops affordable mobile-based crop insurance products to provide smallholder farmers with the financial security they need, regardless of unstable climate trends.  The startup operates in Mali and Uganda and has so far brought insurance to more than 15,000 farmers.

Akili Network launched Akili Kids, Kenya’s first and only free-to-air TV station with educational entertainment for children and families.  Today, Akili Kids is the number one most-watched TV channel in Kenya in households with kids under the age of 18, with a weekly viewership of over 6.7 million children and 4.8 million grownups watching along

Trove builds technology that allows brands to take control of their resale marketplaces, deepening customer loyalty and generating new profits.  The company provides white-label technology and end-to-end operations that power circular shopping for premium brands such as lululemon, Patagonia, REI, Nordstrom, Levi’s, Eileen Fisher, and Arc’teryx.  Trove enables brands to take back items from customers’

Vendease was founded in 2019 by Tunde Kara, Olumide Fayankin, Gatumi Aliyu, and Wale Oyepeju to connect food businesses with suppliers. The idea for Vendease came when the founders, who have been friends for more than five years, noticed their favorite restaurants in cities like Lagos and Accra shutting down.  Inquisitive, they asked the owners

Shyft Power Solutions, formerly known as Solstice Energy Solutions, was founded at Stanford University as a byproduct of the research of the co-founders.  Their journey began as a means to drive solar and battery adoption and enable widespread access to clean, reliable, and affordable energy.  They build technology that will enable the transition to a

Built by the team behind the taxi app ZayRide, ArifPay was established as a business in February 2021 and launched operations in April of the same year once it received its license from the National Bank of Ethiopia – the first one for a fintech startup in the country. The startup has developed an MPOS