QED Makes its First African Investment, Backing Nigerian Fintech TeamApt in $50M+ Deal

QED Investors, a U.S. fintech-focused venture capital firm, has led a new investment in TeamApt, a Nigerian fintech that provides business payments and banking platforms. The investment was over $50 million, according to sources familiar with the matter, though neither QED nor TeamApt would confirm the figure.

Existing investors from the company’s Series B last year (Crunchbase pegs it at $30 million+) — Novastar Ventures (co-lead), Lightrock and BII — all participated in this round.

While TeamApt wouldn’t prescribe any “letter” to this latest round, it can perhaps be described as a pre-Series C round because sources say the company is still in the market to raise a Series C next year.

“We always approach our fundraising effort opportunistically and want to make sure the market context, cash needs of the business and investor profile match our strategic growth views,” said the company’s Tosin Eniolorunda when quizzed whether the current market downturn affected the company’s Series C fundraising efforts initially planned for this year.

“Given the overarching cautious market environment, we were not in active fundraising mode. As a profitable company, we did not need the cash, but we were happy to take an opportunity to add a new high-profile investor.”

With almost $5 billion in assets under management (AUM) and a recently closed $1.05 billion seventh fund, QED has backed more than 180 companies (of which 27 are unicorns).

In a move rarely made by Western VCs, QED announced the hiring of Gbenga Ajayi and Chidinma “Chid” Iwueke to lead its investments in Africa this January. Nigel Morris, the firm’s co-founder and managing partner, in an interview with TechCrunch, said Africa was the final piece of the puzzle for transforming QED into a global fintech-specialist VC firm.

TeamApt operates one of Nigeria’s largest business payments and banking platforms and processes a $100 billion annualized run-rate transaction value via its products Moniepoint and Monnify.

Moniepoint now serves 400,000 small and medium-sized businesses across Nigeria, allowing them to access various features to manage operations: working capital, business expansion loans and business management tools such as expense management (business payments cards), accounting and bookkeeping solutions and insurance.

In TeamApt, QED finds a company that bootstrapped for four years before raising a venture round in 2019 but has grown 300% annually to build one of the largest fintechs in Africa (in revenue and market cap) — and is profitable.

The company generated over $100 million in annualized revenue last year and saw its valuation jump almost four times from its previous priced round, according to sources.

August 11, 2022