Our current focus is our TLcom TIDE (Technology and Innovation for Developing Economies) Africa Fund. TIDE Africa is the first international venture capital fund focused exclusively on technology enabled services and innovation for Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) across all stages of the venture capital cycle. The deep penetration of mobile across Africa had created a new reality, in which the majority of population and businesses has now access to mobile and potentially data services. This digital revolution is the core of the opportunity we are targeting – how to best serve the core needs and aspirations of African businesses and consumers and helping them overcome their key challenges by using affordable technology and innovative business models.

Our focus is equity investments into fast growth entrepreneurs and companies leveraging technology and innovation to serve the SSA market, with the potential to scale globally and the ability to profitably serve low income customers at the Base of the economic Pyramid (BoP), as this remains the vast majority of consumer demand in the region and in other developing economies.

While mobile penetration in the Continent is in the 60-70% range, the penetration of basic services (such as financial services, commerce, energy, health and education among others) remains drastically lower. The investment opportunity is primarily about the application of existing technologies and innovative business models to best serve the African markets.

At TLcom TIDE Africa our focus is to deliver capital as part of a larger support to our entrepreneurs, centered on strategic, operational and financial mentoring for value generation, leveraging a senior team of business building investment professionals combining global industry expertise with local frontier market transaction and management.
The Fund goals are twofold: (a) To achieve outstanding value generation by delivering commercial risk adjusted returns for investors; and (b) To contribute to the social and economic development of SSA by starting and scaling profitable and sustainable companies, and creating jobs and opportunities in the region through market driven investment in technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.