{"id":34284,"date":"2013-03-25T14:25:59","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T12:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=34284"},"modified":"2013-03-26T09:00:31","modified_gmt":"2013-03-26T07:00:31","slug":"88mph-in-vc-funding-boost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/34284\/88mph-in-vc-funding-boost\/","title":{"rendered":"88mph in VC funding boost"},"content":{"rendered":"

88mph<\/a>, an African seed accelerator, has announced that 4Di Capital<\/a>, an independent early-stage venture capital fund based in Cape Town, has invested in the private fund.<\/p>\n

88mph says\u00a0the investment from 4Di provides its group of startups with greater access to a vast network of local investors and the chance to secure follow-on funding.<\/p>\n

In February, 88mph\u00a0selected nine local start-ups out of more than 250 applications for its accelerator programme\u00a0for 2013.<\/p>\n

The group launched its three month accelerator programme in South Africa last year, aiming to\u00a0assists start-ups by providing them with investment, access to business networks and the know how to quickly grow their businesses.<\/p>\n

The fund invests in early stage mobile-web companies targeting the African market, focusing purely on ideas with potential to scale across Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe technology space in Africa is picking up and we\u2019re seeing a lot of activity and opportunity,\u201d said Kresten Buch<\/a>, 88mph founder.<\/p>\n

\u201cInvestors are watching this and beginning to look outside of developed markets like the United States for growth, because those markets aren’t expected to grow as fast as they have in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts sub-Saharan Africa to be the world\u2019s third fastest growing region in 2013 and 2014, with many African economies growing above 7%.<\/p>\n

\u201c88mph is unique in that they provide startups with actual funds, which is very rare for an accelerator in emerging markets and Africa especially,\u201d said Justin Stanford, 4Di CEO and co-founder.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have spent over one million dollars on investing and supporting startups Africa\u2014far more than any other accelerator here. We have chosen to back this accelerator as a part of our desire to help foster and develop the nascent early-stage startup ecosystem in South Africa. \u201d<\/p>\n

88mph is partnered with Google<\/a> for Entrepreneurs and is also funded by private investors including Hannes van Rensburg<\/a>, Fundamo<\/a> CEO and Ranjith Cherickel<\/a>, head of sales and business development, Africa at Nokia Siemens Networks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

88mph opened in Nairobi, Kenya in 2011 and has since made 24 startup investments. The seed accelerator plans to expand to Nigeria.<\/p>\n

More on\u00a088mph<\/h3>\n

Seed tech investor reveals SA candidates<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

88mph dangles $200k investment carrot<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Applications flood in for Cape tech fund<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

88mph, an African seed accelerator, has announced that 4Di Capital, an independent early-stage venture capital fund based in Cape Town, has invested in the private fund. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":31831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1281,3632,5455,53,26,2722,2079],"class_list":["post-34284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-4di-capital","tag-88mph","tag-fundamo","tag-google","tag-headline","tag-imf","tag-justin-stanford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34284"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34296,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34284\/revisions\/34296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}