Pariti and Future Hub Collaborating on the Future of Venture Investing

Future Hub, the early stage investor & accelerator backed by the Chinese phone manufacturer Transsion Holdings, is joining forces with Pariti, the digital platform for venture building in emerging markets, to source, review and diligence incoming deal flow.

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"We are thrilled to be working together with Future Hub as our partners as we launch the private alpha version of our platform," says Pariti co-founder and CEO, Yacob Berhane. “Future Hub is one of our most valued partners in the ecosystem and we are looking forward to powering their investment activities as they continue to expand.”

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Pariti is building the operating system for venture building and venture investing in underserved markets. "Platform investing is the future. It's no secret that capital is increasingly just a commodity," says Pariti co-founder and COO, Wossen Ayele. "The best investors provide more than just capital. They provide their portfolio companies with insight, talent and access to resources. It's how they create value in their portfolio and also gives them access to the best pipeline of companies.”

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Moving forward, Pariti will manage all of Future Hub’s incoming deal flow, with Pariti’s remote experts reviewing each company, tracking deal information and curating deals to Future Hub’s investment team - all through the platform. Pariti will also provide support to Future Hub’s portfolio company through its remote functional experts across finance, product, design, market research and tech / data science.

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Pariti's platform is designed to make platform investing more accessible to investors in emerging markets. While platform investing has received considerable attention in Silicon Valley with high-profile successes like Andreesen Horowitz which has a 150 person staff of functional experts to assist their portfolio companies, the approach is much rarer in emerging markets, though that is changing. “We are seeing an increasing appetite for Pariti’s solution from venture funds that are looking to provide deeper support to their portfolio, but cannot afford to hire a full-time staff of functional experts. That’s happening against a backdrop of LPs increasingly seeking differentiation from fund managers," says Ayele. “We built our platform in response to this, and with the understanding that unless you are managing a large fund with tens or hundreds of millions of assets under management, it’s virtually impossible to build your own platform from scratch under the traditional fund economics.”

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Future Hub is no stranger to being on the cutting edge, as the first Chinese accelerator in Africa, they have been early investors in a number of prominent African startups, including Carry1st, Healthlane and Termii. "After spinning off from our parent company in 2019, we fund great African founders with both tech-enabled mindset and extensive industrial knowledge. As a strategic investor on early stage ventures, we provide not only capital but also know-how based on tech development in Chinese market, a broad network of Chinese business partners and investors, and access to Transsion’s wide mobile user base." says Li.

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Future Hub's parent organization and now strategic investor & partner, the Shenzen-based Transsion Holdings, is the parent of Infinix, Itel, and Tecno mobile phone brands which have led Transsion to be best selling phone manufacturer on the continent. According to research firm IDC, Transsion phone sales represent over 40% of smartphone sales in Africa in the last quarter of 2019 which have helped boost the company's market capitalization to just north of 10bn USD as of September 2020.

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“It has been great working with Pariti. The team has been very supportive in the processes of sourcing, researching and reference-checking and leveraging their broad network. They helped us successfully invest in some top-level startups that we probably wouldn't have found without Pariti's assistance,” says Vincent Li, co-founder and CEO of Future Hub. 

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Future Hub’s launch in Africa signals a growing appetite of Chinese companies to move beyond  hardware, where they have had great success, to also becoming the premier foreign funding partner of the African tech ecosystem. With the support of Transsion, Future Hub sees itself as a platform-enabled approach as a key differentiating factor as they premier Chinese partner of the African tech ecosystem. “It is our firm conviction that entrepreneurship with tech innovation is one of the keys to Africa’s development,” says Li. “Future Hub is committed to supporting founders to build the future for Africa.” 

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If you are interested in reaching out to Future Hub with an investment opportunity please apply here.