Andela – Africa Tech Digest

Recently, global engineering talent outsourcer Andela reached the highly exalted status as a unicorn startup – a startup with a valuation of $1-billion or more. Andela joins an exceedingly exclusive group as one of Africa’s 5 startup unicorns currently operating. The first startup in Africa to achieve a ten-figure valuation was Jumia. The Nigerian-founded company is now a pan-African retail leader and an e-commerce powerhouse, but its valuation dropped below $1-billion in 2019 due to its volatile share price. Interestingly, 4 of 5 current unicorns are from Nigeria – the African country that saw the most VC investments in 2020, according to Statista. The other unicorn is from Senegal, which doesn’t even chart on Statista’s list of top African country’s for VC. Another interesting ...

Andela, a fully remote company that helps tech companies build remote engineering teams (initially from Africa but now a global market), is currently valued at $1.5 billion following a $200 million Series E round led by SoftBank’s Softbank Vision Fund 2, the $30 billion venture fund of SoftBank Group. Joining SoftBank in the investment was new investor Whale Rock and existing investors including Generation Investment Management, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Spark Capital. After closing this Series E round, Andela has raised a total of $381 million since being founded in Lagos, Nigeria in 2014, according to Crunchbase data. Its last valuation of $700 million came when the company raised a $100 million Series D in 2019. Continue reading Image: Unsplash

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Africa’s 5 Unicorn Startups – Which Has the Highest Valuation?

SoftBank sinks $200M into Andela, propels company into unicorn territory