Xecced Ventures, a London-based venture capital (VC) firm has launched the 4thIRiA I Fund, an African fund dedicated to investing in startups building solutions for the fourth industrial revolution.
The new set of investments will be made from a dedicated $100 million fund that targets high growth African startups looking to raise pre-seed to Series-B stage round of investment. The fund will be making investments of between $500,000 and $5 million in such selected startups.
The fund is also firm on inclusion and equality with priority on female entrepreneurship to ensure a gender balance.
With a focus on startups in Industry 4.0, the fund is interested in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and cognitive computing.
“The ultimate goal is to mitigate against the impact of Industry 4.0 on Africa. For example 85% of jobs in Ethiopia risk being lost to Industry 4.0 according to a study.”
Xecced Ventures, Principal, Ibrahim Sanusi.
The new fund will leverage scouts, public and private partnerships in several African countries. Such partnerships will be used to identify high growth startups to invest in. The fund will also make use of technologies like AI and predictive models to curate these startups.
Xecced also plans to facilitate “co-investment synergies” with the Tony Elumelu Foundation.
Selected startups will be provided with mentorship from Xecced’s in-house accelerator to help them scale properly.
There’s no news on when the fund will kick off, but reports note that it is in the process of closing its first investment, which indicates that the fund may already be active.
This is the latest move in the trend that involves private equity firms making their investments focused on African startups. And startups playing in the emerging technologies space are being targeted.
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