Uncovered Fund, a Tokyo based VC fund has introduced a $15 million fund that is expected to close by June this year.
The Japanese fund founded in 2019 will invest $50,000 to $500,000 in African startups in seed and Series A stages.
The firm’s CEO, Takuma Terakubo was once the CEO of Leapfrog Ventures where together with samurai Incubate, they launched the Samurai Incubate fund focused on early stage African startups. During that time, they raised $4.5 million targeted at startups in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa.
“We do not make scattered, one-shot, small investments, but rather we provide long-term growth support, including follow-on investment. In addition, we not only invest, but we also multiply the huge assets of Japanese companies to grow the business and provide technical support and finance as well,” he said.
Uncovered Fund has backed 5 startups that you may know of. They have invested in two Kenyan companies: Skygarden, an ecommerce platform and the fintech company Lipa Later. They’ve also invested on the US based and Africa focused health startup RxAll, mobility startup Gozem and the Nigerian digital freight startup SEND Technologies.
There has been an increase in funding in Africa on startups and the dollars keep coming. In 2020, billions of dollars was invested in African startups with fintech and cleantech taking the lion’s share. Kenya was the leading destination for startup investment in 2020 and it seems that this will continue to be the case in 2021.
