Emerging Markets Roundup: October 11 - October 17 2023

Hi everyone, I’m Gautam. Every week I write the Spice Route newsletter, profiling tech in the five fastest growing regions in the world - India, SE Asia, MENA, Sub Saharan Africa and Latin America.

I’ve spent years immersed in these startup ecosystems as a founder and VC. If you’re a founder or PM building for these markets, a VC looking to invest where the growth is, or you want to stop falling behind on what’s happening in the rest of the world, this newsletter is for you.

If you found this useful, share this with your friends and colleagues.

Last week, I put out a poll to get feedback on a format change I was considering.

The poll results are in - from this week onwards, the funding section will only show the top 5 Funding announcements, with the rest linked to in a spreadsheet.

If you have any feedback on this change, or have other suggestions, just reply back to this email.

Highlights from Last Week’s Funding Announcements

🇮🇳 India’s Game Theory raises funding to build an ecosystem and habit building platform for sports, beginning with badminton, squash, and swimming.

Why it’s interesting: There is rising interest in sport in India, both at the national and individual level. The country achieved a record haul of 107 medals at the recently concluded Asian Games, hosted the IOC’s 141st session in Mumbai, and is hosting the ongoing cricket world cup.

🇸🇬 🇩🇪 Singapore’s Phasio raises funding to digitize product manufacturing, simplifying part design, client collaboration, production workflows and part ordering through its end-to-end platform.

Why it’s interesting: Manufacturing remains one of the largest sectors globally in the earliest stages of digitization. Broken supply chains, along with geopolitical pressures (aka moving manufacturing away from China), are forcing the industry to finally invest in software driven efficiency.

🇧🇷 Brazil’s MBOChip is building specialized, programmable chips for next generation trading algorithms, tailored to the Brazilian and Indian capital markets.

Why it’s interesting: Moore’s Law is slowing down; performance optimization is running up against the laws of physics, forcing technology companies to think outside the box. The result? Special purpose chips are increasingly becoming de rigueur, which has all sorts of implications.

🇿🇦 🇳🇬 South Africa’s Cue raises funding to simplify customer service, while Nigeria’s Haba is building an insurance focused chatbot to make finding and accessing insurance simpler.

Why it’s interesting: Kenya’s M-PESA, which inspired to write this newsletter in the first place, showed us how emerging markets adapt technology to their unique situations. As we enter a new era of Gen AI computing interfaces, it’ll be interesting to see what use cases crop up.

🇦🇪 UAE’s Xpanceo raises $40M to make AR contact lenses with computing capabilities a reality.

Why it’s interesting: Imagine always-on computing, giving you context and when you need it; LinkedIn details of a client during a sales meeting, restaurant ratings as you walk past them, enhanced sports performance…the possibilities are limitless. We could also get pop up ads, a loss of privacy, and more hacking. Iron Man or Black Mirror? You decide.

Top 5 Funding Rounds

AR and VR: 🇦🇪 Xpanceo, a UAE based company building contact lenses with augmented reality features and computing capabilities, has raised $40M in funding from Opportunity Ventures.

Spacetech: 🇮🇳 Agnikul Cosmos, an Indian company building launch vehicles with 3D printed engines capable of taking nano and micro satellites to low Earth orbit, has raised ~$26.7M in Series B funding with participation from Rocketship VC and Mayfield India.

Fintech: 🇮🇳 Oro Money, an Indian gold loan and gold appraisement platform connecting users with financial institutions, has raised $12.5M in funding with participation from Singularity Ventures.

Healthtech: 🇮🇳 Age Care Labs, an Indian eldercare platform focused on improving quality of life for senior citizens, has raised $11M in pre Series B funding with participation from Rainmatter Capital.

IoT and Industrials: 🇨🇱 TIMining, a Chilean mining operations platform providing mining simulations and data analysis, has raised $10M in funding led by Kayyak Ventures.

Who’s Investing

🇲🇺 Africa’s Leapfrog Investments is looking to raise $1B for its Emerging Consumer Fund IV, a new fund to invest in healthcare and financial companies in Asia and Africa.

🇮🇳 India’s Rukam Capital is planning to launch a ~$12M fund to invest in early stage startups.

🇯🇵 Japan’s Sony has launched a $10M fund to invest in African entertainment startups.

🇮🇳 Nikhil Kamath, the co-founder of India’s popular online stock trading platform Zerodha, has launched the WTF Fund to back entrepreneurs under the age of 22 with funding of ~$192K.

🇸🇬 🇮🇳 Singapore’s Jungle Ventures, which invests in both India and SE Asia, has launched the First Cheque@Jungle programme to back early stage startups in idea to seed stage.

🇨🇱 Chile’s Activa (LarrainVial’s alternative assets division) and Fen Ventures have launched a Secondaries Fund to provide liquidity to current investors and encourage investments in later-stage startups.

Place of the Week

There’s a whole world out there to explore. Here’s a guide to visiting Komodo.

Thank you for reading 🙏 

This newsletter is very early, and I’m exploring taking this in multiple different directions.

If you found this useful, share this with your friends and colleagues. 

Best,

Gautam