Seedstars, a Switzerland-based international investment firm, aims to foster investment across emerging markets across a range of sectors.
Seedstars, the Switzerland-based investment firm, will partner with emerging and diverse managers with local expertise across a range of developing markets. Seedstars will provide the new managers with the resources required to launch new funds and to develop their own investment firms. Seedstars’ investment arm, Seedstars Capital, is designed to appeal to emerging fund managers across the Middle East and other emerging markets with the support of xMultiplied, a Switzerland-based investment holding company.
Seedstars: Aiming to drive USD 500 million in funding
The company aims to drive more than USD 500 million of new funding into emerging and diverse managers, who will create over 10,000 new jobs and generate over USD 20 billion of additional GDP across emerging markets in the next 10 years, the company claimed.
Seedstars’ initiatives will take place in partnership with Seedstars Africa Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund investing in high-growth companies active across Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the company.
An “open and more inclusive” VC industry
Benjamin Langer, Partner of Seedstars Capital, said, “We believe the venture capital industry needs to be more open and inclusive and we find highly talented managers across emerging markets. Unfortunately, most lack the scale and resources to attract institutional limited partners and depend on local funding to deploy their strategies and create the impact they long for. For limited partners, the growing number of new managers makes it difficult to identify the best-performing and most impactful strategies. By pooling their assets and bringing them under our community, we can accelerate the growth of rising managers while offering limited partners the visibility and investment vehicles they need to increase their allocation to the asset class.”
Sectors of interest
According to the company, it will launch funds focused on EdTech, supply chains, climatetech and other high-impact sectors. Seedstars plans to announce the local managers they will be working with shortly. In addition, the firm will collaborate with a number of sector-specific technology funds, from Pre-Seed to Series A across a range of emerging and frontier markets.
African startups raised almost USD 310 million in November alone, with North Africa receiving the bulk of the funds.