Aidi Africa Has Partnered With Amazon Web Services (AWS) To Help African Businesses Grow
Aidi Africa has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help African businesses grow
Aidi Africa, an African venture builder led by Tolulope Obademi as its portfolio manager, has partnered with Amazon Web Service's Activate (An arm of AWS that supports early businesses) to help early-stage African startups reach investor-ready status faster.
Aidi Africa has provided support to a number of industry-leading startups in recent months, including Termii (YC W20), PayHippo (S21), Dash (Techstars 21), Raise (500 Startups 21), Bumpa, Cova, Nigenius, and Swipe, through its angel syndicate.
The venture builder was founded in 2019 by a group of successful founders from the African ecosystem, including Deborah Gbolade (Aidi Ventures), Ham Serungoji (Chipper Cash), Emmanuel Gbolade (Termii), Tayo Oviousu (Paga), Francis Osifo (54gene), Francis Sanni (Magic), and Emmanuel Okeleji. Deborah Gbolade (Aidi Ventures), Ham Serungoji (Chipper Cash (Seamless HR).
Accelerator (Powered by AWS Activate)
Aidi, which describes itself as an African founder-focused accelerator, partnered with Amazon Web Services last month to launch a four-week program to prepare African startups for the market and to attract investment. These companies were exposed to various pieces of training from other successful industry founders and professionals in key areas such as culture building, product scaling, and the art of raising funds, among others.
As of today, Aidi has been successful in guiding its startup portfolio companies through the process of being accepted into major global accelerators and raising over $8 million in funding, with valuations ranging from $50 million to $70 million.
Startups in the Currently Running Batch
Aidi Africa's summer 21 batch of companies includes the following companies:
- MediSpark: Health-tech startup unifiedHealth is developing solutions that connect and power businesses in the African health-care industry.
- Zemo: A fintech company based in Kenya that enables businesses to reduce wasteful and fraudulent spending while also gaining access to cashflow credit through the use of its proprietary credit card service.
- Vite: Starting with Mauritius, an all-in-one logistics platform that enables people to easily and affordably access transport and delivery services across more than 70 tier 1 and tier 2 underserved cities in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
- Moni: A fintech lending platform for mobile money agents that employs a social accountability model to provide agents with float while also providing them with the opportunity to establish their credit history.
Looking to the Future
The firm's senior portfolio manager, Tolulope Obademi (Senior portfolio manager at Aidi Africa), says the firm is looking to double down on its accelerator program twice every year while focusing on establishing partnerships between its startup alumni community and large corporates, both within Africa and throughout Silicon Valley.
Other major corporations that have backed Aidi's initiatives include Hatch (an arm of Digital Ocean), FirstBase, Brex, and Mercury, in addition to Amazon Web Services. Aidi expects to partner with more organizations before the end of the year, as well as to increase the number of business angels in its angel support community, according to the company's team.
