Silverbacks Holdings, a leading private investment firm focused on Africa-related companies in high-growth and underserved industries, announced its ninth profitable exit, this time from a partial divestment from its stake in Nigeria’s Omniretail, a B2B commerce startup digitizing informal retail supply chains, recognized by Financial Times as Africa’s fastest growing company in both 2024 and 2023. The exit generated a robust multiple of five times initial cash invested, reinforcing the firm’s strong track record of value creation across African markets. This announcement was made at Bloomberg’s 2025 African Business Media Innovators (ABMI), held in Livingstone, Zambia.
Founded in 2019, Omniretail is a leading B2B platform digitizing West Africa’s informal retail supply chain. The company has been valued at over $100 million. Its revenue grew by 71,818% in three years, from $280k in 2020 to over $120M in 2023. Connecting over 150,000 retailers and 5,800 distributors, it enables efficient inventory, finance, and payments. Omniretail recently raised $20 million in Series A funding, reached profitability in 2024, and processed over ₦1.3 trillion ($810 million) in transactions last year.
In a sign of growing cross-sector collaboration, Omniretail’s Founder & CEO, Deepankar Rustagi, invested in Silverbacks’ portfolio company, the Cape Town Tigers basketball team, 2024 BAL/NBA Africa semi-finalists, 2023 finalist in a CBA tournament in China and South Africa national champion in 2023, 2022 and 2021.
“Silverbacks has been a truly resourceful early investor and a consistent contributor to the growth of OmniRetail’s network. I’m excited to see them continue the journey with us as I also have the pleasure to support their sports venture,” Deepankar Rustagi, commented.
“This 9th exit is another validation of our long term strategy and reaffirms the exceptional calibre of entrepreneurs we support. Inevitably, Silverbacks’ crop of founders will be at the forefront of Africa’s next generation of global brands,” Ibrahim Sagna, Executive Chairman of Silverbacks Holdings, said.
This exit is part of Silverbacks’ partial program for its exits announced last month and highlights strong regional performance. Nigerian exits have delivered a 10.7x MOIC and 81.5% IRR over 2.8 years holding period on average, while Egypt’s exits show a 9.7x MOIC and an exceptional 339% IRR in just 1.7 years holding period. The African continent contributed about 4 times initial capital invested by Silverbacks so far, with fintech leading across all sectors at a 13.7x MOIC and 91.9% IRR for an average holding period of 3.7 years. In contrast, non-African exits returned an encouraging but more modest 1.3x MOIC, underscoring Silverbacks’ focus and expertise in high-growth underserved markets within the African continent. These consistent, strong exits with attractive IRRs demonstrate that investing in Africa is not only viable but also a smart move for generating superior returns.
This milestone follows Silverbacks’ recent eighth exit at 29x cash invested from a Nigerian fast-growing remittance and payment focused company Lemfi, the addition of Hollywood media industry leader Sanford R. Climan to its advisory board, and the capital deployment into African Warriors Fighting Championship (AWFC). This most recent portfolio company is the leading Nigerian combat sport platform. It recently partnered with DAZN (backed by Saudi based SURJ) with the aim of elevating African traditional sports globally in preparation for its next biggest Dambe event set for June 28th at the National Stadium Velodrome in Abuja Nigeria, on the margin of the highly anticipated AFREXIMBANK Annual General Meetings.
In October, Silverbacks became a significant minority shareholder and board member in AWFC. This shortly followed its investment in South African sports-tech company NERGii, where it secured a board seat as well. Other notable investments include Moove (mobility fintech backed by Uber), Wave (mobile money and remittance fintech backed by Stripe and Sam Altman), Flutterwave (payment processing and remittance fintech backed by Mastercard), Cape Town Tigers (2024 BAL/NBA Africa semi-finalists), and Forever7 Entertainment (delivering top rated Netflix movie content).
Founded in 2019, Silverbacks applies a data-driven portfolio construction that targets 3x to 5x returns by focusing on export-oriented, tech-enabled businesses. While covering a broad base of direct and indirect investments, its core investments are concentrated around 14 companies whose combined valuation is in excess of $10bn. The firm helps founders scale across the continent, expand overseas, and improve access to capital while driving youth employment and gender equality in Africa. The firm continues to power Africa’s rise onto the global investment stage.
About Silverbacks Holdings:
Established in 2019, Silverbacks Holdings is a Mauritius-based investment firm targeting high-growth opportunities in Africa’s tech, sports, entertainment and creative economy. The firm seeks to deliver superior returns while backing dominant platforms’ builders expanding from Africa to the rest of the world.