Top 35 Gaming Startup Investors in South Africa in October 2023

Portfolio highlights

• Novel Farms — Novel Farms uses microbial fermentation to develop cruelty-free, inexpensive and tunable bioscaffolds for the production of cell-based meat products. Novel Farms mission is to craft the taste and texture of the gourmet meats and transform cell-based meat consumption into a sought-after culinary experience for the next generation of consciouseaters.
• Minus — A sustainable coffee alternative, combining the taste, look, and smell of coffee with a smaller footprint to ensure a brighter future for coffee and the planet.
• Unicorn Biotechnologies — Unicorn Biotechnologies is developing a fully automated manufacturing platform to enable cellular agriculture producers to seamlessly scale products from the lab bench to supermarket shelves. Our full stack platform combines hardware, software and analytics to completely automate cellular agriculture manufacturing, reducing costs and increasingproduct quality. By providing a clear path to scale cellular agriculture from grams to tons, we will improve human and planetary health and drive the transition to animal free agriculture.

Portfolio highlights

• Material Bank — Material Bank International
• Rock The Bells — Rock The Bells is an online store for hip-hop culture merchandise.
• East Asian Super League — EASL creates a premier basketball league while elevating the sport in Asia as the region’s first professional intra-club basketball league. EASL is the premier regional championship competition for club basketball in East Asia.

Portfolio highlights

• Afference — Powering the sense of touch in the digital world. Feel digital objects in AR, VR, and XR with our groundbreaking haptic feedback device, the Phantom.
• Proxima — At Proxima, we aim to push the boundaries of interactive entertainment by blending innovative technology with deep artistry. We believe in the magic of exploration, the power of creativity, and the strength of human connection that form the very foundation of our gaming experiences.
• CANOPUS Networks — Understand exactly what is happening on your network at all times. CANOPUS indexes terabit-scale traffic in real-time to provide actionable insights and forensic analysis.

Portfolio highlights

• Farmless — A farmless fermentation platform has the potential to create an entirely new food repertoire, producing proteins, carbohydrates, beneficial fats, vitamins, and minerals from the ground up," explained Oner. "We are creating a new interface between food and electricity by domesticating microbes chosen for their food properties and abilityto grow on renewable energy-based feedstocks.
• Daisy Lab — Daisy Lab pioneers precision fermentation technology in New Zealand
• Atlantic Fish Co — Developing sustainable, cultivated seafood using cellular agriculture

Portfolio highlights

• Inoxico — Inoxico is a provider of business-to-business credit risk solutions. We combine quality data and cutting edge technology to deliver predictive analytics.
• Kombo King — Kombo King Ventless Fryer Tech removes the need for plumes of steam & the constant eye of an inconsistent employee to Revolutionize & solve the frying industry!
• Kusini Water — Kusini Water builds water treatment systems from nanotechnology and macadamia nut shells.

Portfolio highlights

• Longjiang Network — Longjiang Network is an AR mobile game developer, dedicated to the development and IP operation of AR games.
• Wicked Saints Studios — We used behavioral technology to create interactive media that is wickedly fun and actively good. Wicked Saints emerged from Niantic’s incubator last fall (CNBC article) with a prototype of the world’s first adventure activism game, World Reborn. At its simplest, World Reborn is an interactive story game with real-life quests facilitated byaugmented reality (AR). It not only defies genres between narrative and AR games but blends the digital and real world. Wicked Saints sees AR as a bridge between fantasy and reality, with untapped potential to offer players immersive experiences that change them and their world for good.
• The Believer Company — Join the journey We are building a world-class team to serve players for years to come. If you believe in games, we believe in you.

Portfolio highlights

• Payabli — Payment infrastructure for your software platform. Accept payments from customers and make payouts to vendors and contractors with our API's.
• Foro — We help your business connect, compare, and choose between top business lenders. Get started to see the best loan options for your business.
• Carry1st — Carry1st develops and publishes enriching mobile games and content apps for African consumers.

Portfolio highlights

• Netomnia — Netomnia are investing in and building a new full-fibre network right across the UK. Future-proofing homes and businesses with a reliable, high-quality, and high-speed internet connection.
• AdaniConneX — AdaniConneX is the largest Hyperscale Data Center provider. Avail the maximum uptime, highest energy efficiency, full scalability and security to your business and customers.
• Reliance Industries — Reliance Industries is engaged in the exploration, development, and production of crude oil and natural gas in India and internationally. Reliance Industries is the second-largest publicly traded company in India by market capitalization and is the second-largest company in India by revenue after the state-run Indian Oil Corporation.

Portfolio highlights

• Craydel — Get Professional career guidance based on Psychometric Assessments and get scholarships to the best MBA, Engineering, Medical, Education online and on campus courses in Africa and Abroad.
• EMTECH — For Modern Central Banking
• Terragon Group — Terragon is a leading Data and Marketing Technology company that uses data and analytics to help companies focused in Africa, intelligently connect at scale to their customers. We use an aggregation of online and offline data, and predictive scoring to help brands, marketing agencies and platforms accurately target people across channels anddevices. Headquartered in Lagos; Nigeria, we also have a presence in Kenya, South Africa, Ghana and India.

Portfolio highlights

• Loki Foods — We're producing sustainable, plant-based foods from the Arctic. Iceland’s first plant-based cod and seafood!
• THE PACK — Nutritionally complete vegan dog food. Grain-free & developed with food scientists & animal nutritionists, try our delicious vegan dog food now.
• Swedish Temptations — Swedish Temptations, founded in 2019 by CEO Pia Qvarnström, built a brand named Bärta for producing organic, vegan and fermented food. The ingredients include Swedish split peas.

Portfolio highlights

• Talk360 — Talk360 is an easy-to-use calling app that helps people make affordable international calls to any mobile and landline number. They believe that reliable communication and digital services must be affordable and accessible to everyone, regardless of someone's background. Especially people in emerging countries in Africa, who often need theseservices the most, do not always have the necessary banking possibilities. To bridge this distance, Talk360 will launch the world's first single checkout platform for Africa. This platform will combine all locally available payment methods and currencies across Africa, together with over 1.25 million cash points of sales, and will eventually be available to other companies as well. This means that 500 million Africans will be able to purchase digital services they never had access to before.
• FinAccess — FinAccess is a banking software for microfinance organisations.
• Right Now Response — Your go-to for expert breakdown assistance. Our dedicated team ensures you're back on the road swiftly and safely. Contact us for reliable support today!

Portfolio highlights

• Oze — OZÉ brings African small businesses into the digital era. It is an app that makes it easy for businesses to track sales, expenses, and customer information. The data is analyzed to provide tailored recommendations, reports, and business education. If the entrepreneur needs a little extra support, an OZÉ Coach is just a click away. As they are usingOZÉ to manage their business and learn how to run it better, we are learning about them. Using this data and machine learning, we can predict their credit risk and provide them with affordable capital from our banking partners. With over 20,000 registered users, OZÉ is the largest online community of SMEs in Ghana. The most exciting thing is that OZÉ works; 97% of businesses that have used OZE for at least 9 months are growing or profitable or both!
• Twende — Twende connect people traveling in the same direction - drivers offer the empty seats in their car to other travelers going the same way.
• 4G Capital — Our Mission is to provide innovative financial inclusion tools to catalyse growing businesses and markets.

Portfolio highlights

• EtherMail — EtherMail is the Web 3.0 Email Solution setting the standard for anonymous and encrypted wallet-to-wallet communication.
• Arkam Intelligence — See intelligence on the addresses, entities, individuals, and assets most important to you.
• SignalRank Corporation — SignalRank Corporation is a FinTech company in the Venture space. It focuses on the seed stage asset class and uses data analytics to allocate capital to the best seed fund managers for their top performing companies. GPRank and CompanyRank are two proprietary algorithms it leverages to automate capital allocation. The company invests from balancesheet. Its customers are seed stage investors with outstanding companies in their portfolio.

Portfolio highlights

• Castelion — We are a modern defense production company building the next generation of military hypersonic, vehicle, and strike systems to deter future wars.
• Headway — Headway is a mental healthcare system provider based in New York. It develops a health insurance advisory platform designed to connect patients with therapists and provides administrative support to therapists who don’t typically accept insurance. The company was founded by Andrew Adams, Jake Sussman, Dan Ross, and Kevin Chan in 2019.
• Blackbird — We believe the next great hospitality technology platform should connect restaurants and their customers directly, in meaningful and ongoing ways. Blackbird is founded by a team with a passion for restaurants and a track record of using technology to solve problems.

Portfolio highlights

• Sendmarc — Stop cyber criminals from sending emails using your domain and protect your customers, suppliers and employees from cyber attacks with DMARC Security.
• Leta — Leta Technology is a software development company that creates supply chain and logistics software to enable the efficient and automated movement of goods.
• Numida — Growing African small businesses with affordable, convenient, and fair credit.

Portfolio highlights

• Livestock Wealth — Livestock Wealth is a crowdfarmingTM company that allows people to invest in livestock and earn from sale of the offspring.Their unique CrowdFarmingTM concept allows individuals to share the facilities of a commercial livestock farm while our experts look after their cows on a day to day basis.Cows have been a source of pride and a store ofwealth in Africa for centuries. The wealth in cows is based on something real – beef. The company enables anyone to be an organic beef farmer.

Portfolio highlights

• Terraa — Terraa is a B2B distribution platform in Moroccan.
• OmniBiz — Omnibiz is a digital platform for small businesses willing to attract new customers.
• Revivo — Revivo is an online marketplace for electronics spare parts, tools & accessories.

Portfolio highlights

• VALR — Buy and sell bitcoin, ethereum & more | Pay anyone for free with VALR Pay
• Snapplify — Snapplify is at the forefront of edtech solutions in Africa, and specialises in enabling digital learning for individuals and institutions via the largest digital educational marketplace in Africa. As a global edtech company, Snapplify strives for radical inclusion to level the playing field and equip individuals across emerging markets with theworld-class tools they need to collaborate, innovate and thrive. Snapplify’s technology is used in other educational products to facilitate collaboration throughout the educational community.Snapplify for Education’s award-winning platform is already a top choice for institutions integrating digital education into their classrooms. From software to support, Snapplify provides institutions with everything they need to create a secure, collaborative e-learning environment for students. Snapplify’s robust 24-hour-access digital-library solution offers thousands of free ebooks and widely applicable, curriculum-approved educational content supplied by partner publishers from across the globe. Snapplify’s diversity of device integration allows schools to use its products on the devices that they already have access to, without having to invest in costly digital infrastructure upgrades. Snapplify’s solutions are industry celebrated and globally recognised for their innovation in technology.In order to achieve its educational goals, Snapplify has built strong relationships with diverse partners around the growth of its ebook, e-textbook, and device catalogue, and partnered with international publishers and other key stakeholders to meet the demand for widely relevant, curriculum-compliant digital educational content. As a socially minded company, Snapplify is committed to supporting others and creating sustainable change through collaboration and innovation. Snapplify empowers, inspires, and uplifts teachers via Teacha! (a media hub, resource marketplace, and careers portal for educators); is the digital content partner on a project that delivers technology and e-learning to public schools in South Africa’s Gauteng province, and runs impact programmes through the Snapplify Foundation.Snapplify originated in South Africa, focusing initially on the South African education and digital content industries. Since its establishment in 2012, the company has grown and expanded into new markets in Africa and the United States, with offices across South Africa, as well as in Nairobi, London, Amsterdam and New Jersey. Snapplify is backed by AngelHub Ventures, a venture capital company backed by former First National Bank CEO Michael Jordaan and the Harris family, as well as international investors. In 2019, Snapplify secured $2 million expansion capital from venture capital firm Knife Capital, and empowered African investment manager Hlayisani Capital’s Hlayisani Growth Fund.Snapplify for Education’s award-winning platform is already a top choice for institutions integrating digital education into their classrooms. From software to support, Snapplify provides institutions with everything they need to create a secure, collaborative e-learning environment for students. Through Snapplify’s e-learning and digital library solution, Engage, educators can share teacher-created, multimedia resource materials with students; administrators can manage the access and permissions for multiple student and staff accounts; schools can host their own 24-hour access digital content library (which comes with over 50 000 free resources including study guides, e-textbooks, past exam papers for multiple curricula, children’s books in African languages and more); and students and parents can purchase prescribed e-textbooks. Snapplify’s diversity of device integration allows schools to use its products on the devices that they already have access to, without having to invest in costly digital infrastructure upgrades. Snapplify’s solutions are industry celebrated and globally recognised for their innovation in technology.
• Real Time Wine — Share your wine moments. Real Time Wine is the social wine discovery app for everyone who enjoys wine, not just those who understand it. [In App Stores NOW!]

Portfolio highlights

• 3X4Genetics — The future of healthcare is personalized. Build a more successful practice and transform more lives using the power of DNA-driven health recommendations, through DNA & Genetic Testing!
• Lipidio Pharmaceuticals — Lipidio Pharmaceuticals is a healthcare company that focuses on advancing a molecule to treat diseases associated with excess body fat. It includes non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, Prader-Willi syndrome, and antipsychotic drug-induced weight gain. The company was founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Diego, California.
• SEngine Precision Medicine — The Search Engine For Identifying Personalized Cancer Treatments.

Portfolio highlights

• Stems Labs — community and platform for collaborative creativity
• Thirdverse — Thirdverse (formerly known as Yomuneco Inc) is engaged in Virtual Reality content and services planning, development, sales and management.
• Avalon — Avalon is an Orlando, Florida-based platform to create games and virtual experiences.

Portfolio highlights

• Voltpost — The lamppost electric vehicle charger.
• Earthodic — Earthodic is an Australian materials science company creating functional biobased coatings. Paperbarc by Earthodic is a biobased water-resistant coating for pulped or paper products. It has better water-resistance than wax coatings, more sustainable and circular than plastic coatings. Repulpable. Re
• Ocean Rainforest — Ocean Rainforest offer a collection of premium fully-traceable seaweed products, mostly for food and cosmetic producers.

Portfolio highlights

• PayHippo — PayHippo is making it easier to finance small and medium sized businesses in Africa. There is a need for financing of $158 bn for SMEs in Nigeria alone. To start, PayHippo helps SMEs access and spend lender capital effectively. During their first full operational year in 2020, the PayHippo co--founders leveraged their domain expertise and foundingexperience to beat their 2020 goal by 50%.
• Carry1st — Carry1st develops and publishes enriching mobile games and content apps for African consumers.

Portfolio highlights

• Powerspike — Powerspike is a new type of advertising network based on content creators - where any marketer can make their brand famous in a few clicks. Our Endorsement Serving technology automatically buys, executes, and optimizes content creator endorsements - replacing the traditionally lengthy process of RFP’s, human negotiations, and insertion orders.
• Ready Player Me — The Ready Player Me platform leverages AI, ML , and a suite of developer-first tools to empower developers to integrate avatars into their games and apps to launch faster, improve user adoption, and grow revenue through asset monetization.
• Carry1st — Carry1st develops and publishes enriching mobile games and content apps for African consumers.

Portfolio highlights

• CNote — CNote created technology to streamline community-centered impact investing at scale. Further Racial Equity and Social Justice by investing with CNote.
• Rhaeos — Rhaeos, the world's first wearable shunt monitor, aims to improve the quality care for patients with hydrocephalus through a novel, thermal biosensor. Developed within Northwestern University with collaboration between Dr. John Rogers, McCormick School of Engineering, Feinberg School of Medicine and Kellogg School of Management, Rhaeosrepresents a unique multidisciplinary translational effort for an important clinical need.
• Masa — Masa Finance seeks to disrupt traditional centralized credit infrastructure by providing individuals, businesses, and developers with the tools to access credit and enable untapped wealth creation for 4.95B people globally.

Portfolio highlights

• Leta — Leta Technology is a software development company that creates supply chain and logistics software to enable the efficient and automated movement of goods.
• Jumba — Jumba is a construction technology platform that streamlines B2B construction material purchase and financing.
• UTU Technologies — Trust infrastructure for the sharing economy.

Portfolio highlights

• Sudo — Sudo is an open API platform that enables businesses to embed powerful financial features into their products. Build in minutes, launch in days.
• CreditChek — Easily assess & verify credit worthiness in Africa.
• Carry1st — Carry1st develops and publishes enriching mobile games and content apps for African consumers.

Portfolio highlights

• Nile.ag — Nile connects fresh produce buyers and producers by providing a platform for direct and secure transactions
• LifeCheq — LifeCheq is a startup offering digitized, and holistic personal finance.
• SweepSouth — Book a home cleaning online from your mobile, tablet or computer. SweepSouth connects you with a cleaner in minutes. Cleaners are experienced, reliable, efficient and insured.

Portfolio highlights

• Adaptavate — Our purpose is to help the construction industry adapt to change, by mainstreaming the production, manufacturing and availability of world leading low carbon building materials.
• Greenspark — Turn your e-commerce business into a force for good, increase sales and engage your customers in climate action with Greenspark.
• Cheesecake Energy — Cheesecake Energy is developing advanced thermal and compressed air energy systems to store energy from intermittent renewables, turning them into reliable power on-demand.

Portfolio highlights

• Root — Programmable insurance that you can integrate into your product or service with ease
• Money Fellows — MoneyFellows digitizes the ROSCA model, enabling group lending and savings.
• Dynamic Commodities — Dynamic Commodities is a specialist producer and exporter of a range of frozen fruit delicacies.Dynamic Commodities is exporter of an innovative, value-added range of frozen fruit products, including fruit sorbets and various cut frozen fruits, to countries such as the US, Canada, Japan and South Korea.

Portfolio highlights

• Abela — Abela is a mobile payments platform that allows the underserved to make and receive payments.
• Vocalysd.ai — Vocalysd is a customer-centric, AI-powered insights tool. Vocalysd unlocks usable, easy-to-digest insights from your conversational data. These insights are key to optimising client interactions and enhancing your customers' experience.
• Welo Health — Welo Health is an innovative Healthtech Company. It to provide at-home health services.

Portfolio highlights

• Sava — Sava is a multi-management platform that provides an unlimited number of virtual cards as well as automated accounting reconciliation.
• Stitch — One API integration for all online payments across South Africa. Accept Instant EFT, debit + credit card, cash, direct deposit and debits. Manage + reconcile digital payments and send payouts.
• Bettr — Bettr is a digital banking app for creator. Download the app to get your zero monthly fee digital bank account and virtual card. Join our community of creators, gamers, influencers, freelancers, tiktokkers, streamers, YouTubers and digital gig workers.

Portfolio highlights

• AI21 Labs — AI21 Labs is an AI lab & product company whose mission is to reimagine the way we read and write by making the machine a thought partner to humans.
• Aifficient.Tech — AIfficient.Tech is a revolutionary platform designed to empower small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the power of artificial intelligence. With a focus on enhancing productivity, efficiency, and innovation, AIfficient.Tech offers a wide range of AI-driven services tailored to meet the unique needs of businesses across variousindustries. Our mission is to level the playing field for SMEs by providing them with AI solutions that were previously accessible only to industry giants. We aim to help businesses work smarter, not harder, by automating routine tasks and providing real-time data and predictive analytics for informed decision-making. What sets AIfficient.Tech apart is our extensive library of 1,500 predefined and trained Autonomous AI Agents, classified using ONET codes, that cater to a wide array of functions and industries. These roles act as intelligent virtual employees, known as Cognitive Autonomous Agents, that integrate seamlessly into existing workflows.
• RAD-AID International — RAD-AID International is dedicated to improve radiology services in the developing world and poor areas.

Portfolio highlights

• Akudo — Akudo is a learning-focused neo bank for teenagers. Akudo offers the best prepaid debit card for teens and kids in India for all online and offline payments.
• Questt — School homework app by Questt helps teachers to assign homework to students. Download today on your smartphone.
• Stream Captain — Captain.tv makes games for streamers to play live with their viewers! Streamers are the hosts, and viewers play alongside them and each other live on sites like Twitch!

Portfolio highlights

• Magic Spoon — Magic Spoon cereal is high-protein, low-sugar, keto-friendly, and gluten-free. Available in Cocoa, Frosted, Fruity, Blueberry, Peanut Butter, and Cinnamon.
• Everyrealm — Leaders in metaverse innovation and development.
• Altered State Machine — Altered State Machine, aims to be a platform and protocol which any developer can build on it; can create, own, and compete with AI-based agents (bots) and upgrade and train their AI, buy, and sell them as NFTs. This will bring an evolution for NFTS.

Portfolio highlights

• The Index — The Index is a platform of cutting-edge technology used by clients in the fashion and retail industry to grow their companies and enhance their digital footprints
• De Novo Foodlabs — De Novo FoodlabsThe future of nutrients
• Smart Separations — Smart Separations is a limited company based in London UK that has patented an innovative microfiltration technology to produce ceramic filters with self-assembled controllable pores of uniform size in the range between <1 and 50µm. This tight pore size control and range availability will revolutionise the field of MF with a cost-effectiveproduct.It aims to be the world’s leader in MF and particle separations technology – filling the void gap that exists in the market nowadays.