Eight Medical, Farmz2U, PaddyCover secure $200k each from Catalyst Fund

By Alexander Chiejina

• Lead 7 other African startups to benefit from Catalyst Fund 

Nigerian startups, Eight Medical, Farmz2U and PaddyCover have secured the sum of $200,000 each from Catalyst Fund, a pre-seed venture capital (VC) fund and accelerator backing high-impact tech startups that seek to improve the resilience of underserved, climate-vulnerable communities in Africa. Each of the startups will benefit in the form of $100,000 in equity investments and $100K of hands-on venture-building support.

Eight Medical is a cloud-native Emergency Medical Services (EMS) platform that provides on-demand urgent care when and where it is needed. This “911 for Africa” connects emergency medical responders on motorcycles to users in distress in 10 minutes or less, including for climate-induced crises.

Farmz2U is an agtech enterprise driving sustainable agriculture. Through Farmz2U, farmers can access personalised farming advice (especially on regenerative farming practices), affordable credit, quality and traceable inputs, and direct buyers for their harvest.

PaddyCover works with established insurers and digital platforms to design and offer bespoke products via their platform that facilitates flexible insurance packages, including health, life and, in the future, index-based crop insurance. The offerings are built into the lifestyle touchpoints of the customer, either as a convenience or as complementary value-adds.

Maelis Carraro, managing partner of Catalyst Fund explained that Catalyst Fund is thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with ten groundbreaking African startups working to build a more resilient and sustainable future. Our goal is to back mission-driven founders that share our vision of a world where every individual has the tools and opportunities they need to thrive. From agtech to insurtech, waste management, disaster response, and carbon finance, these startups display finance, tech, and business model innovations that will help communities better adapt to climate impacts and grow their resilience”.

Seven other African startups that are beneficiaries of the $200,000 equity investment and venture-building support include:

Agro Supply [Uganda]: it is a mobile layaway system that helps farmers save money gradually using their mobile phones and to cash out in order to purchase farm inputs such as hybrid (drought-resistant) seeds, from maize to sorghum, sunflower and soybean during the planting season.

Assuraf [Senegal]: The firm is a digital insurtech platform offering end-users access to a range of insurance products (e.g. agriculture, automotive, health, housing, natural disasters) from over 20+ insurance companies with a fully integrated claims management system.

Bekia [Egypt]: The firm is a tech-enabled waste collection solution enabling companies and households to exchange their waste (plastic, paper, electronics, metals, cooking oil) against a financial incentive paid on a digital wallet.

Farm to Feed [Kenya]: The startup is a food supply chain company that is providing a digitally-enabled solution to food loss/waste. Their climate-smart solution focuses on providing a market for imperfect and surplus produce from farmers, contributing to food security and greenhouse gas emissions reduction.

Octavia Carbon [Kenya]: the Global South’s first Direct Air Capture (DAC) company that is building the world’s lowest-cost DAC hub. Octavia is currently building DAC machinery to capture carbon from the air for resale as either carbon dioxide or carbon credits to off-takers.

Sand to Green [Morocco]: This startup transforms deserts into cultivable land using agroforestry methodology and a solar-powered desalination system to design climate-smart regenerative farms.

VAIS [Egypt]: This startup is a precision agtech startup committed to climate resilience and food security by providing data intelligence to farms via their FarmGATE application, which is powered by proprietary artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML)-based virtual field probing (VFP) technology, to enable better use of water and other farm inputs to produce better yields.