The Capital Quest | Seqoon, Omnisient, other African startups raise cash; 54gene in trouble

On Oct 28, 2022

Egypt-based proptech Seqoon, has secured $500,000 in a pre-Seed round through Banque Misr’s pilot programme to support startups in Egypt, with participation from other angel investors.

Founded early this year by Omar Eldessouky and Mohamed Elkhatieb, Seqoon allows users to co-own shares of a vacation home. The company plans to use the money to hire people after launching its first co-ownership destination in El Gouna.

Seqoon intends to expand into other Red Sea destinations, such as Dahab, as well as the Mediterranean North Coast by next year.

Omnisient

Cape Town-based startup Omnisient that enables data collaboration for consumer intelligence has raised an undisclosed amount led by Buffet Investments and KLT with participation from Shoprite, Africa’s largest fast-moving consumer goods retailer.

Omnisient enables businesses to use consumption data in a secure, compliant and risk-free manner to create new revenue streams.

Apart from Buffet Investments and KLT, Shoprite joined follow-on investors One5, ENL and early shareholders Investec and Nedbank in their investment in Omnisient.

“This round of investment will be used to support our continued geographic expansion, as well as the ongoing development of our platform into the world’s leading source of consumer intelligence that fully complies with global consumer privacy regulations,” said Jon Jacobson, co-founder and CEO of Omnisient.

Infiuss Health, Spotter, Weego

Moroccan early-stage investment firm UM6P Ventures has disclosed a set of new ventures it has backed over the last few weeks.

These include Weego, a Moroccan digital platform for mass transit that has built three business segments- a SaaS platform enabling corporations and transit agencies to provide optimized mass-mobility solutions to their employees, real-time multimodal itineraries for travel and enabling commuters to book seats on vehicles available exclusively for the Weego app and minimize travel time.

UM6P has also backed Spotter, a Moroccan fintech startup enabling businesses of every size to assess the creditworthiness of their check paying customers. The firm is building its services around secured APIs, a part of the open banking ecosystem, to help its users quickly distinguish between a customer paying by check and another customer for whom the transaction will be declined due to the insufficient funds.

Infuss Health is the other startup that has been backed by UM6P Ventures. Infiuss Health is developing a decentralized SaaS platform to power remote research and clinical trials in Africa.

Pharmacological companies attempt to include a large and varied population within their phased trial cohorts to prove out their medical thesis. However, Africans, a significant group of genetically diverse participants, are not traditionally well represented within their demographic profile, rendering their trial outcomes potentially skewed.

Led by Melissa Bime, Infiuss Health provides clinical trial access to African participants and allows pharmaceutical companies to conduct and monitor these trials via the Infiuss Health Probe Platform. Through its direct-to-participant approach, it helps corporate and academic researchers diversify their cohorts by connecting them directly to thousands of eligible African participants to take part in their clinical studies.

UM6P Ventures, the investment arm of UM6P, is backed by the OCP Group. It is a seed-stage venture firm and invests in startups from their creation to Series A funding.

54gene

Just over a year after African genomics startup 54gene collected $25 million in Series B funding, the venture is in trouble. It has sacked over two-thirds of its employees and has lost both co-founders.

The startup, which is backed by Adjuvant Capital, Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund, KdT Ventures and Endeavor Catalyst among others, has been facing a revenue run down. In a separate report, TechCrunch said the firm raised some money at one-third its valuation from existing investors.