Tokyo’s Samurai Incubate Launches $18.6M Fund for African Startups

Samurai Incubate Inc., a Tokyo-based venture capital firm, officially closed its ‘Samurai Africa 2nd General Partnership’ fund after successfully raising $18.6M (¥2.026B).

In addition to Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria, Samurai Incubate Inc. has recently added Egypt as one of their fund's focused countries. Moreover, the venture capital firm increased the maximum amount of investment to ¥80M per deal.

The Japanese VC firm started investing in African startups in July 2018, and its portfolio currently stands at 26 companies, with some companies to receive investment from their second fund including, Eden Life, Evolve Credit, Shyft Power Solutions, FMG, Oneport and Pricepally.

Samurai Incubate Inc.'s fund will be used to accelerate investment in African startups, and looks to target 30 to 40 new companies at the Pre-seed and Seed stages, in addition to follow-up pre-Series A and Series A investments in 7 to 10 existing portfolio companies.