Antler East Africa Closes $13.5M Fund To Invest In Early-Stage Startups

Antler East Africa, the Nairobi office of VC firm and venture builder Antler, has closed a $13.5 million fund to invest in early-stage tech startups in the region. Antler, which was first launched in 2019, actually intended to raise $10 million but ended up with an extra $3.5 million.

It runs a full venture building model with two cohorts each year. Five cohorts with 153 founders have passed through the accelerator programs so far, and the firm has made 14 investments, according to reports and a few of them include AIfluence, Marketforce-subsidiary Digiduka, Honeycoin, Uncover Skincare, Try Cooked and Vybe.

Antler East Africa’s new fund allows it to accept founders who want to build their startups from scratch and invest in already formed teams that need capital to scale. The round included Baillie Gifford, a well-known Tesla backer; family offices such as Canica; and institutional investors like the IFC.

For existing startups, two to six weeks is all that’s reportedly needed for Antler East Africa to work with the team before the firm cuts a check. Antler East Africa cuts $100,000 checks for a 20% equity in each selected team.

The due diligence of the firm is overseen by its global Antler platform, where that team pulls upon its network of more than 400 experts across technologies and industries. 

After the pre-seed investments, Antler East Africa claims to continue to support the teams as they hit the ground running and start raising funds from follow-on investors. 

“We still do the venture building. That’s still the core of what we do. Just that now that the fund is closed, we have enough money to spend in existing businesses that are coming in,” Selam Kebede, the firm’s director, told TechCrunch over a call. “And we can invest in stuff that’s already been built with a pure kind of VCs type setup investment.”