Key highlights

• The €110M fund is backed by a diversified pool of renowned investors.
• The fund invests in disruptive, innovative and scalable post-revenue ventures based in, or with a focus on, Africa.
• Since its inception in October 2019, CAIF has backed ten prominent companies operating across the continent in multiple sectors.

The fund is backed by LPs such as EIB, AfricaGrow, FMO, Bpifrance, Triodos Investment Management, Proparco, SIFEM, BIO and, among others, as well as a diverse pool of globally renowned investors, including Development finance institutions, leading multinational corporations, and high-net-worth individuals across Africa and the Middle East as well.

With the close of the fund, the CAIF team will significantly deepen their focus on investing in the most promising early to growth-stage startups improving African lives with disruptive tech-enabled products and services.

With initial check sizes ranging from €1-10M for growth-stage and up to €1M for select seed-stage tickets, the fund invests in startups across multiple sectors, including Fintech, Mobility, HealthTech, EdTech, AI, Digital Content and AgTech.

Since its inception in October 2019, CAIF has backed ten prominent companies operating across the continent, including 54gene, OZÉ, Migo, PalmPay, Heetch, KaiOS, Boomplay, Aerobotics, and WhereIsMyTransport. Most recently, the fund co-led Tunisia-based EdTech startup GoMyCode’s $8M Series A round.

“AfricInvest’s partnership with Cathay Innovation brings to Africa global expertise in the innovation space combined with a robust network in the US and Asia, all helping to build bridges between Africa and the rest of the world, allowing the fund’s investees to grow into regional and global champions.” said Yassine Oussaifi, Partner at AfricInvest and co-head of CAIF.

“As technology scales and brings massive upgrades to global populations, startups are critical in building the new digital infrastructure needed for emerging regions like Africa to redefine industries and society in the 21^st century. We’re proud to partner with the AfricInvest team — connecting the entire African continent with tech hubs around the world — in a shared mission of accelerating the transition to a more digital, sustainable and inclusive economy for Africa and beyond,” added Mingpo Cai, Founder and Chairman of Cathay Capital and Cathay Innovation.

Since its launch in 1994, AfricInvest’s multi-strategy platform has actively contributed to strengthening the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in Africa.

CAIF relies on AfricInvest’s rich investment expertise, its extensive pool of resources from its network and its physical presence across 11 regions through offices including Abidjan, Algier, Cairo, Casablanca, Lagos, Nairobi, and Tunis to provide local hands-on support, create synergies with portfolios and assist with geographic expansion.

With over 200 portfolio companies across 25 African countries in a variety of high-growth sectors, of which 106 have exited, AfricInvest has, to date, raised over $2bn AUM across 21 funds and benefits from strong, long-term support from both African and international investors.

Founded in 2015, Cathay Innovation is a leading venture capital firm providing entrepreneurs with the support of a global ecosystem across North America, Asia, Latin America and Africa.

The global platform unifies technology investment across continents, investors, entrepreneurs and leading corporations to accelerate startup growth with access to new markets, invaluable industry knowledge and introductions to potential partners from the start. With over €2bn assets under management and offices across 3 continents, Cathay Innovation has a strong track record of over 120 global investments, including 19 unicorns, in startups accelerating the sustainable and digital transformation of industry and society.

CAIF enables promising ventures to build and scale innovative technologies that drive inclusive socio- economic growth in Africa.

To date, the fund has proved tremendous traction and scalability with portfolio companies expanding their global footprint to over 21 markets across the continent.

The Fund’s portfolio companies have also aggregated significant impact at scale in recent years with over 136m Africans reached with inclusive and digital solutions–meaning $1 spent reaches more than one user on the continent.

With its current portfolio, the Fund has created and sustained over 1,400 direct jobs, with women representing an average of 35% of the workforce. Deployed by a team of investment professionals located in the centers of VC innovation across Africa, the fund will continue to support African entrepreneurs to scale their innovative technologies across the continent and beyond, as well as support global entrepreneurs in their expansion into Africa.

“The Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund was born out of the idea that innovative and tech-enabled startups in Africa are solving important problems and socio-economic gaps. We see this funding opportunity as a means to deliver strategic support to the outstanding startups looking to innovate and improve lives in Africa. Already, CAIF has reached over a hundred million people through job creation and inclusion, but there are still millions across the continent with limited economic resources on our radar,” said Khaled Ben Jilani, Senior Partner at AfricInvest and co-head of CAIF.

The venture capital market in Africa has seen exponential growth over the last decade with the acceleration in digital transformation across all sectors.

As a result, the industry is becoming the fastest-growing innovation ecosystem globally.

In 2021, the ecosystem reached a new milestone of c.$5 billion in venture capital, more than the preceding two years combined and close to three times more than in 2020.

As one of the largest early- to growth-stage Pan-African innovation funds, the final round places CAIF in a solid position to double down its efforts to focus on innovative and scalable post-revenue ventures based in, or with a focus on, Africa.

As a result, CAIF will continue to firmly stand at the forefront of the continent’s rapidly evolving VC scene.

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At close, Cathay Innovation Fund III will be one of the largest multi-stage venture capital funds globally and is backed by institutional investors and multinational corporations including Sanofi, TotalEnergies, Valeo, BNP Paribas Cardif, Groupe SEB, Groupe ADP (Paris Aéroport) and more.

In the next ten years, all industries face massive change as modern digital infrastructure redefines markets by better linking products, customer needs and the wider value chain. The new fund looks to empower companies to lead the larger markets of the future by backing next-gen technologies, business models and platforms at the center of digital and sustainable transformation.

“We’re committed to helping create the economy of tomorrow while having a positive impact on society,” said Mingpo Cai, Founder and Chairman of Cathay Capital and Cathay Innovation. 

“Fund III marks an important milestone in our journey, building a multi-industry platform that connects large corporations and startups to collaborate, exchange knowledge and support the sustainable transformation of all stakeholders. We’re honored to have the trust of new and existing investors, partners and industry leaders who leverage the Cathay platform to take the lead in their respective fields and work together to drive meaningful change.”

Cathay Innovation has made over 120 investments across Europe, North America, Asia, Latin America and Africa that have gone on to raise over $16B and created 15,000 jobs since starting in 2015.

The firm has backed 19 unicorns including Chime, Glovo, Ledger, Owkin, Momenta, Sidecar Health and ZenBusiness with exits including the public offerings of Pinduoduo and Wallbox and the acquisitions of Glovo by Delivery Hero, Drivy by Getaround, Alkemics by Salsify and Trifacta by Alteryx.

From eight offices across five continents, Cathay Innovation now has around €2B assets under management across three marquee funds along with specialized vehicles such as C.Entrepreneur, Cartech, Smart Energy, Cathay AfricInvest Innovation, Seaya Cathay Latam and the recently launched Ledger Cathay Capital fund dedicated to web3. 

Fund III will focus on series A, B and late-stage startups in sectors including consumer, enterprise software, AI, inclusive fintech, digital health, new mobility, retail, energy and beyond. With check sizes ranging from €5M to €80M, the firm will invest as a lead or co-investor with reserves for follow-on rounds in key geographies including Europe, Asia and North America.

A fund to support the transformation of industries and society

The new fund looks to bring greater purpose to investments by focusing on both transformation potential and financial returns, leveraging various elements of Cathay Innovation’s investment approach:

• A global investment platform: includes investors with deep local expertise spanning the world’s innovation hubs to identify emerging trends while granting startups access to new markets.
• An extensive corporate ecosystem: the fund is heavily supported by globally leading multi-sector companies, acting as strategic partners that collaborate with portfolio companies to scale innovation in real-world industries and their own digital transformation.
• A sustainable investment framework: integrates sustainability into every step of the investment cycle to measure, track and maximize the impact of startups while helping entrepreneurs build more responsible, resilient businesses.

“We believe the time is now to accelerate digital transformation over the next ten years as innovation represents the biggest opportunity to take on some of the world’s largest challenges,” said Denis Barrier, Co-founder of Cathay Innovation. 

“With Fund III, we now have tailored investment theses for healthcare, finance, consumer, energy, mobility and logistics – investing in next-gen technologies that will be pervasive in global industries to deliver better, more efficient products and solutions addressing the needs of end customers. And this new generation of companies, larger and more sustainable than ever before, have the potential to have a greater impact on industries, society and the day-to-day lives of people everywhere.”

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