About $58 million has been raised across two funds by Enza Capital, a venture capital firm based in Nairobi Kenya. This firm supports startups “organizing the offline online” and “digitizing key African industries.”
Four years ago, Enza established an early-stage fund which “find, back, and help build category-defining startups” in the pre-seed and seed stages. Presently the fund has invested in fintech, logistics, health, human resource, and climate tech firms. The company, due to its massive follow-on investments to Series B, now considers itself a multi-stage investor and remains dedicated to these sectors in its second fund started this year.
Speaking on both funds raised, the co-founder and managing partner of Enza, Mike Mompi said that they made 48 investments in 31 companies. The investments spread across 8 African commercial hubs, including Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Egypt and South Africa.
Amongst the companies funded by Enza from its pilot fund is Guidewheel, a climate tech startup also based in Kenya, that has since spread to America and Mexico after a Greycroft-led Series A round. Another one is Shara, another Kenyan-based fintech. Before raising a yet-to-be-announced Series A round conducted by Index Ventures, Enza Capital furnished a pre-seed check to the company. At just four years in operation, Enza has also co-led a Series A investment in Ivorian fintech Djamo and Kenyan insurtech Turaco from its second fund.
The co-founder and managing partner said that some of the companies in its portfolio companies are Autochek, Jumba, Craydel, Cloudline, and SeamlessHR with a fund size between the sum of 250,000 dollars to 5 million dollars. He went on to reveal Enza Growth Capital, an evergreen, later-stage investment vehicle they established in 2022 to fund up to 20 million dollars per company with which Enca Capital can access more follow-on investments.
Mike Mompi concluded by saying “We have sufficient capital to write meaningful checks. Sometimes, we’re going in early and also follow-on in our companies. Then we have the growth fund, which is mostly a later-stage vehicle, where we can invest at any stage and co-invest with the core funds in existing portfolio companies, thereby staying with our companies for a long time.”
Being a Kenyan-based firm, Enza Capital has an office in Nairobi with an 8-staff. Remote team spread across the city of Nairobi, Johannesburg, London, and New York. The co-founder stated that they will be setting up an office in Lagos and a Francophone African city to assist its portfolio companies in those markets.
Due to this expansion, the firm will be employing more staff to operate in close proximity with these ventures across the different departments. Until now, Enza Capital has provided value in the technical department, where its CTO-in-Residence assists startups’ engineering and tech teams pre- and post-investment. The VC firm is also establishing its founder partner initiative, where founders and leadership groups of its portfolio companies become co-owners of the firm.
