On a mission to boost innovation driving tourism to enhance Africa’s economy, Purple Elephant Ventures has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding.
The startup’s part towards achieving its goal is by building creative startups from scratch focused on leveraging technology to scale tourism. It plans to build about four startups at the intersection of tourism, climate and technology, every year.
Investors who took part in the round were Klister Credit Corp., a Canadian investment firm, The Untours Foundation, angel investors such as Fede Pirzio-Biroli, founder of Playfair Capital; Ian McCaig, former CEO of lastminute.com and M-Kopa board member; Anthony Rock, president of Rock Impact Capital; Rich Hoops, executive director at Impact Capital; Jim Villanueva, managing director of Global Partnerships Social Venture Fund, and Helena Riese Harstad, co-founder and chair of the Optimizer Foundation.
Digitizing tourism for a greener future, Purple Elephant Ventures was founded by Ben Peterson, Mikul Shah, and Jan Van der Does de Willebois, before the heat of the pandemic in 2020.
Within the pandemic period, the company founded Elephant Bookings, a software as a service (SaaS) product, and Nomad.Africa, a content-to-commerce magazine.
Purple Elephant Ventures wants to enable startups in the tourism sector raise enough capital to facilitate sustainability, as well as have an online presence to aid global scale.
