Investors in this circular come with Klister Credit Corp. , a Canadian investment firm, the Untours Foundation and a number of angel backers, adding Fede Pirzio-Biroli, founder of Playfair Capital; Ian McCaig, former CEO of lastminute. com and M-Kopa board member; Anthony Rock, president of Rock Impact Capital; Rich Hoops, CEO of Impact Capital; Jim Villanueva, CEO of the Global Partnerships Social Venture Fund, and Helena Riese Harstad, co-founder and president of the Optimizer Foundation.
The venture capital study plans to create around 4 startups at the intersection of tourism, climate and technology, per year.
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“I think what’s exciting for the team is all the odds of digitizing tourism for a greener future. And one of the wonderful benefits of working in a studio is that we can constantly play with new, cutting-edge ideas. We have what we call ideation sessions, where we have very structured conversations about the tourism industry from the attitude of construction companies that will help reduce the carbon footprint of the tourism industry in Africa,” said CEO Ben Peterson, co-founder of the startup with Mikul Shah. and Jan van der Does de Willebois, in early 2020, just before COVID hit.
Despite the uncertainty in the tourism sector due to the COVID pandemic, the PEV team did not slow down and introduced two startups: Elephant Bookings, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product, and Nomad. Africa, a commercial content magazine. .
Elephant Bookings is a B2B product that brings hospitality providers online, helping them increase their occupancy rates by enabling direct bookings. Nomad. Africa was originally founded through Shah, who is also the founder of places to eat discovery site EatOut Africa. lately looking for co-founders and CEOs for any of the startups.
But why in tourism?
“There are thousands of startups in agriculture, FinTech, energy and fitness, all primary sectors of the African economy, but very few in tourism, and only a few have raised capital. This is despite tourism being one of the top vital sectors on the continent,” said Peterson, also a former senior spouse of AHL Venture Partners, an early-stage VC in Africa.
“It seemed to me, so I started researching why it was like that and, at the end of the day, I came to the conclusion that it was a big industry with real margins, but that it was absolutely stagnant in the 1970s. Most tourism organizations have an online presence. You even go to the internet sites of the most beloved Safari accommodations and can’t even book a room. make an electronic booking,” he said, adding that Elephant Bookings is the solution to the first hole PEV has noticed in the market.
Peterson said further research revealed to PEV that the industry in Africa is ripe for disruption, mainly because the sector is among the fastest developing in the world.
“I learned a challenge there with the modernization of this industry and we started looking for it a little bit more. And I temporarily came to the conclusion that there was not only a business opportunity to modernize the tourism sector. There were dozens of possible tactics to do. this.
Africa’s tourism sector is expected to grow by 6. 8%, double the rate of the continent’s overall economy, to $279 billion over the next decade as it recovers strongly from the effects of the COVID pandemic. This is according to data from World Travel.
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