South Africa VC Investor Market Map 2020

A Dynamic Investment Landscape

South Africa’s venture landscape is one of the most dynamic that we cover at Baobab Insights. With a diverse range of investors including; funds, corporates and incubators, all actively investing both locally and internationally.

Our analyst team has mapped out 44 of South Africa’s active VC funds.

Funding data suggests that $356.9 million USD has been invested into companies in South Africa by VCs this year alone, which is fantastic news given the continued impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic throughout 2020.

A Regional VC Investment Hub

We also looked at investment data across the surrounding region, including; Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. We found that on average companies in South Africa banked around 90% of all VC dollars invested in the wider region in 2018 and 2019.

Earlier this year we reported on the Southern Africa venture landscape in more detail. Much like the trends seen in East and West Africa, FinTech companies attracted a significant portion of total investment.

In total, 31% of deals in the region in 2020 were secured by FinTech companies, but Healthcare and Biotechnology solutions also saw an increase in funding – increasing from 9% in 2019 to 14% in 2020 (year to date). Telehealth and insurance solutions also saw increased activity, as did on-demand health services such as Ingress Healthcare which provides medical practitioners with on-demand rentals to start a medical practice. Below are 10 companies that caught our eye in Q2 2020.

Let us know who we missed!

Leading VC backed start-ups in South Africa in Q2 2020

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This article was first published in October 2020.