P1 Ventures, the US and Africa-based investment fund has closed $35 million of the second close of its second fund. The venture capital firm aims to touch $50 million by the final close. The fund has bagged the International Finance Corporation (IFC) as its first public institutional investor. In September last year, P1 Ventures had completed its first close of $25 million.
With this close, the fund is expanding its team into Nairobi and Dakar and doubling its investments in sectors like AI-powered SaaS. The fund had also recently hired a data scientist to integrate AI into its investment and workflow processes. This is the first time a fund has leveraged AI to source deals and talent in the African ecosystem.
With AI fund aims to enhance its investment processing capacity, and also look at opportunities more effectively.
The IFC partnership will make it easier for P1’s startups to access growth capital, and also expand their operations. The partnership will also help P1 to double down on sectors like fintech and AI-powered SaaS.
Some of its investments include – the Algeria-based super app Yassir, the Nigeria-based employee healthcare platform Reliance Health, the Ivory Coast neobank consumer challenger neobank and the Moroccan fintech and e-commerce app – Chari.
P1 has significant confidence in the potential the African continent presents, the team believes these emerging markets often embrace technologies at a faster pace than their developed counterparts, also in the past few years, mobile money has bypassed the need for a card infrastructure in the region, accounting for close to 48 per cent of the world’s mobile money accounts in 2022.
The fund aims to back founders that use emerging technology like gen AI to disrupt industries like retail, agriculture and healthcare among other industries.
In a note shared by the company Halbouny, the co-founder and managing partner stated, that there is an unprecedented rate of innovation, resilience, and high-quality founders across Africa. He added that while international investors remain pessimistic, the P1 team has been optimistic of the African ecosystem. He added it is one of the best vintage years for the regional VC funds.
The fund is focused on backing second-time founders and operators who have proven models, products, and in-demand software business models.
Hajjar, the co-founder and managing partner of P1 added the team has decided to allocate meaningful resources to building their in-house data science tools and process that will augment the investment team with better screening and sourcing.
Olivier Buyoya, IFC’s Regional Director for West Africa, said by supporting market-disrupting business models, their investment in P1 ventures aims to increase the competitiveness and efficiency of traditional markets in key sectors that boost inclusive economic growth across the continent.
