TLcom Capital, a venture capital firm known for backing some of Africa’s most prominent startups, has deployed 50% of its dedicated $5m pre-seed fund, signalling a sustained commitment to the continent’s earliest-stage founders.
The fund, named TIDE Africa Pre-Seed Investments (TAPSI), hit the milestone following its participation in a $2m seed round for TurnStay, a South African travel payment platform.
Launched in 2022, TAPSI was created to give TLcom earlier access to promising companies, writing cheques of up to $200,000. More strategically, it acts as an upstream feeder for the firm’s main $154m TIDE Africa Fund II, creating a clear path for high-performing portfolio companies to secure larger, subsequent funding rounds directly from TLcom.
This multi-stage approach is designed to give the firm a long-term role in a startup’s life, from its initial idea to a potential exit.
Eloho Omame, Partner at TLcom Capital, says the goal is to get involved at the very beginning of a company’s journey.
“Building in Africa is not for the faint-hearted,” Omame tells Sifted. “However, the likelihood of success significantly increases if we support and work with founders earlier on in their journeys and we grow alongside them.”
The feeder fund in practice
The strategy appears to be working as designed. Nigerian edtech company Talstack is a case in point. After receiving initial pre-seed capital from TAPSI, the company validated its business model and demonstrated early traction, which led to a subsequent seed round from the main TIDE Fund II in 2024.
With the deployment for TAPSI now at its halfway point, the fund’s portfolio shows a broad geographic and sectoral spread. Its current investments include:
- TurnStay (South Africa) — Travel tech
- Talstack (Nigeria) — Edtech/HR tech
- Bright Financial (Sudan and Ethiopia) — Fintech
- Tradehub (Egypt) — B2B commerce
- Agrails (Kenya) — Agtech
The fund has also backed three additional startups through a partnership with First Check Africa, a vehicle focused on investing in companies with female founders.
TLcom plans to make up to ten more pre-seed investments from the TAPSI fund before the end of 2026.
A multi-stage investor
By formalising its pre-seed investing, TLcom is embedding itself more deeply into the African tech ecosystem’s funding lifecycle. In a market where early-stage capital can be the highest-risk and hardest to secure, the dedicated fund provides a structured entry point for founders.
This strategy positions TLcom as a multi-stage investor, capable of supporting companies from inception through to maturity. The firm, which has approximately $250m in assets under management, has a portfolio that includes some of the continent’s best-known scaleups, such as Andela, uLesson, Autochek, and FairMoney.
“With TAPSI as a dedicated pre-seed arm of our investment platform, TLcom is uniquely positioned to back companies across their entire growth journey from ideation and product-market fit to scaling and maturity,” says Omame. “It reinforces our role as a long-term partner to Africa’s most ambitious founders.”