LLH Capital has cut back its stake in Optasia with the fintech platform’s unicorn-status IPO on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).
Following its profitable exit from Optasia, LLH is looking to scale its footprint on the African continent particularly.
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The investment firm, founded by well-known business figures Romeo Khumalo and Gil Oved, partners with founders in fintech and telecoms across the continent and other emerging markets.
While the company’s plans have been reported as the creation of ‘an AI Africa fund’, Oved says ‘AI’ really is a catchall phrase for the ventures they look at.
‘The reality is that we want to invest in fintech businesses, but there is no business now that isn’t doing things in AI’, he comments.
And LLH is ready to invest billions (in rand terms) in this burgeoning field over the next few years.
“Whether it’s a traditional fund or co-investments along the way, we’ve got a family office now and we’ve committed $50 million to this initiative. In the next two or three years we’re looking to deploy about $200 million together with investors and partners, and we’re already seeing a lot of deal flow.”
“It’s all in the same space – of payments, remittances, loans, microloans and nanoloans. It’s about financial inclusion and basically uplifting the continent and other emerging markets.”
This LLH does by providing not only capital but strategy, mentorship, guidance, and a good governance and regulatory framework for businesses, Oved says.
Linking back to Optasia, he remarks what an amazing journey it’s been to see the startup transforming and scaling to what it is today in the ten years they have been exposed to it.
There are many entrepreneurial businesses like Optasia springing up to find solutions for customers, he says.
Oved talks about the financial services sector and the telecoms sector as two very big, but highly regulated sectors that areconverging.
“For that to materialise into profit you’ve got a lot of businesses very similar to Optasia… and these big behemoths need to outsource to them very often because they’re not able to do it themselves in-house – they either outsource or acquire. These businesses start off small but they’re profitable and grow very quickly, and that becomes an interesting space for LLH.”
Scroll up to the audio player to listen tot he conversation with LLH Capital’s Gil Oved