AfricInvest and Cathay Innovation definitively close the pan-African fund at €110m

Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund (CAIF), a pan-African fund launched through a partnership between AfricInvest, a multi-asset investment platform in Africa and Cathay Innovation, a company of European origin but in global oriented venture capital firm, achieved a final close of €110 million.

Last week, Cathay Innovation announced plans to raise €1 billion for its third fund to invest in growth and early-stage companies in Europe, North America, Latin America and in Asia. Over the past three months, the fund has launched two sister entities: a $110 million crypto fund and a $500 million healthcare fund.

Cathay Innovation takes a different approach to Africa. Unlike other regions where the firm invests from its multi-stage fund and ventures on its own, for Africa it partnered with Tunisian firm AfricInvest in 2019 to support promising early-stage startups. startup or growth on the continent.

Founded in 1994, AfricInvest manages several asset classes, from private equity to venture capital and private credit. Over the past decades, the company has raised more than $2 billion across 21 funds. Its more than 200 portfolio companies, of which 106 have exited, span 25 countries. A track record like this is what Cathay Innovation - which has $2 billion of AUM and offices in San Francisco, New York, Paris, Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore - sought four years ago when companies bought entered into the partnership and formed CAIF.

CAIF first announced its fund in 2019. At the time, it was seeking to raise $168 million for Series A to Series C investments. fundraising didn't go as planned for a variety of reasons, Denis Barrier, co-founder and CEO of Cathay Innovation, told TechCrunch that CAIF has adjusted its expectations and decided to raise 100 million euros. “So, in fact, we exceeded that goal in terms of fundraising,” he said.

The CEO also highlighted how CAIF's support for early-stage founders enabled the company to shift its strategy and reaffirm its original belief in seeding Series A deals. also made bets at a later stage. According to a statement, the company invests up to €1 million in the seed stage and between €1 and €10 million in growth-stage companies.

Yassine Oussaifi, partner at AfricInvest and co-director of CAIF, said the company supports startups with “strong” Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) and helps them become regional leaders before pursuing global ambitions . It is a step by step that the partner tells. Africa is a large but fragmented market. As startups must expand from their home country to another – say, Lagos to Nairobi or Cairo to Casablanca – to achieve massive scale, the importance of companies like CAIF with on-the-ground resources cannot be overstated. But beyond these continental borders, the use of Cathay Innovation's network is essential.

“We work hand in hand to invest in Africa,” Oussaifi told TechCrunch during a call. “AfricInvest brings its network and its presence on the ground to African entrepreneurs. And then the next step, we're working with Cathay to help those companies expand beyond Africa, into other emerging markets, and work with the expertise and know-how on markets they have developed over the years. »

The South African startups Aerobotics and WhereIsMyTransport are examples that illustrate this process. Both companies, after making significant progress in their home country and other African markets, have expanded into the United States and Mexico respectively, with an eye on other international markets. In some cases, CAIF has funded companies incorporated outside of Africa but with operations on the continent...