Sabi’s Anu Adasolum is 1 of only 2 female CEO’s leading Africa’s 100 most-funded startups

Only two of the 100 most funded startups in Africa have female chief executive officers. This was revealed in a report by Africa-focused tech startup funding analytics company, Africa the Big Deal. And according to the report, one of those women leaders is Anu Adasolum, the co-founder of Nigerian logistics startup, Sabi.

In 2009, Adasolum graduated with a BSc in Economics and Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London. The following year, she bagged a Master’s Degree in Management, Organisation and Governance from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

She went on to hold various strategic roles in organisations like KPMG, Jumia and Rensource Energy where she was both General Manager and Chief Operations Officer.

In 2020, Adasolum co-founded Sabi, a Nigerian B2B marketplace, with Ademola Adesina. The startup enables merchants, (wholesalers, aggregators, distributors and manufacturers) to grow their businesses using its technology.

Sabi’s technology facilitates access to fulfilment, logistics, ERP tools, data insights, a B2B marketplace, and financial services. In essence, Sabi acts like a middleman between businesses and their markets.

Unlike other B2B platforms that buy off manufacturers and then distribute, Sabi provides access to assets needed across the entire value chain from the demand and supply side on a single platform. These channels include offline agents, call centres, merchant partners, supplier centres and mobile apps. Each stakeholder can access tools around inventory management, sales, tracking, digital invoices and analytics on the platform.

The platform has more than 10,000 agents that serve merchants on its network. It makes money by taking a transaction fee when any merchants perform any sale on the marketplace. The company also earns a margin for providing loan services to them.

In November 2021, the startup raised $6 million in funding led by CRE Venture Capital with participation from Janngo Capital, Atlantica Ventures, and Waarde Capital. This marked its entry into venture funding. Five months later in April 2022, the startup raised $20 million in a Series A funding round led by Norrsken.

A little over a year later, in May 2023, the startup raised $38 million in a Series B round led by CommerzVentures with participation from five other investors. Thus, the startup has raised a combined $64 million in funding. The B2B company has a current valuation of over $300 million.

Anu Adasolum is blazing the path for women in tech

Women-led startups have continued to lag way behind their male-led counterparts in every possible metric. This is especially so in the all-important area of tech startup venture funding. Indeed, only 27 start-ups in Africa have raised more than $100m in equity, debt or grant funding since 2019, none of which are led by women.

However, Adasolum’s Sabi which ranks 40 in Africa’s most-funded startups list, stands as Africa’s most-funded woman-led startup, having accrued $64 million in total investments. Cape Bio Pharms ranked 44 with Belinda Shaw as its CEO, is the only other woman-led startup on the top 100 list.

Cape Bio is a spin-off company of the University of Cape Town set up to help commercialise the innovations of its biopharming lab. The startup secured a substantial $50 million grantback in 2020, with no public record of additional fundraising since.

While there are no other female-led ventures in the Top 100 as presently constituted. Lori Systems which was headed by Uche Ogboi from mid-2021 to early 2023 deserves a mention. She led the company after she was promoted from COO to CEO, replacing the startup’s founder and then-CEO, Josh Sandler.

It is also important to note that Gro Intelligence, a deeptech startup co-founded and then headed by Sara Menker raised $85 million in a Series B round back in January 2021. This raise still remains by far the largest round ever raised but a female-led start-up on the continent. Sara Menker was, however, replaced by James Cariello earlier this year, as Gro Intelligence is now unfortunately rumoured to be closing down.