Investment Philosophy
AHL Venture Partners puts entrepreneurs first because building Africa’s most successful and impactful businesses is a team sport. We make decisions transparently and communicate openly, our source of capital enables us to invest over many subsequent funding rounds, we bring an outside perspective to our investee companies from having an accessible team based on the ground in East Africa with a deep understanding of the local business environment, and we remain focused on excellence and impact over the long term.
We make minority equity, quasi-equity and debt investments in companies led by world-class teams taking innovative approaches to solving big problems in our sectors of focus. We look for highly commercial business models where increased scale creates increased impact.
Our Capital
We can provide capital in a number of different ways to address the market realities and support our portfolio at every stage of the growth journey.
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Our secured working capital facilities provide an alternative to using equity to fund the working capital requirements that come with rapid revenue growth. This $1 million to $5 million facilities are designed to support businesses with realisable assets that can be provided as collateral or companies that are already profitable where we can lend based on the cashflows of the company. We use creative, structured solutions to meet the needs of borrowers.
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Our venture debt facilities are loans of $1 million to $5 million provided alongside a Series B+ equity raise to extend the company's cash runway but without creating further dilution for the shareholders, venture debt enables businesses to delay their next equity raise and in turn ensure the next round is at a higher valuation improving overall shareholder returns.
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AHL has over a decade of experience making direct equity investments in Africa. As the market and AHL have matured, we have refined our equity strategy to focus on the sub-sectors where our expertise and other investment products can add the most value.
We make investments from Seed through to Growth Equity and can follow on over many subsequent rounds to support the entire scaling journey. As we invest out of a permanent capital vehicle, as opposed to a traditional 10-year fund, we can take a long-term view, making multiple successive investments in high-performance companies.