Aries Media Ventures has announced the launch of its inaugural early-stage venture fund, Aries Media Ventures Fund I, targeting media-technology startups serving Sub-Saharan Africa. The fund has already begun deploying capital, with initial investments in three companies: Aktivate, a creator marketing platform; HustleSasa, an events commerce platform; and Book Mahali, a venue booking and hospitality platform.
The launch comes at a time when Africa’s creative and media sector remains one of the most underfunded segments of the continent’s broader startup economy, despite its scale and global cultural influence. A 2026 industry analysis estimated the sector as a $59 billion market that receives less than 1 per cent of total venture capital deployed across the region. In 2022, when African startups collectively raised over $6.5 billion, digital media ventures captured less than 1 per cent of that funding, with fintech alone accounting for nearly 40 per cent.
Aries Media Ventures was founded as Aries Media Project in 2023, initially operating as a professional network connecting media and entertainment startups in emerging markets with investors and operators in Los Angeles, New York, and London. After three years of facilitating introductions between founders and global media executives, the organisation shifted to a direct-investment model.
The fund is led by Founding General Partner Alykhan Kaba, whose career spans more than a decade across media, entertainment, and corporate development. Kaba has held roles at Live Nation, Entertainment One, Activision Blizzard, and NBCUniversal, where he currently serves as Vice President of Content Strategy for unscripted content. He is a Canadian national of Indian heritage whose parents grew up in Tanzania — a background he has said shaped his investment thesis.
Kaba has described the gap Aries seeks to address in structural terms. “The investors who understand media don’t understand these markets, and the investors who understand these markets don’t invest in media,” he said in a recent interview. He has also argued that the largest global media companies have historically overlooked innovation emerging from underserved markets. “Capital bears the burden of going where the innovation is, not vice versa,” Kaba said in a statement announcing the fund.
Aries Media Ventures Fund I invests at the angel, pre-seed, and seed stages. Its mandate focuses on tech-enabled businesses operating at the intersection of media, entertainment, and commerce. Kaba has been explicit that the fund does not invest in record labels, production companies, or film and television content itself, but rather in startups with a scalable technology component. The firm sources deals through two channels: identifying founders already building businesses around significant market opportunities, and partnering with established media companies to identify operational challenges they face when expanding internationally, then connecting those problems with founders capable of building solutions.
The three portfolio companies reflect this thesis. Aktivate, founded by Akinbola Asalu, positions itself as a “creator operating system” for Africa, replacing the ad hoc use of direct messages and spreadsheets that brands previously relied on to manage influencer campaigns. Since 2023, the platform has onboarded more than 50,000 verified creators across Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa and served over 800 businesses. It has backing from The Baobab Network and The Jobtech Alliance, as well as a partnership with Access Bank on SME creator marketing. Earlier reporting described Aktivate as a bootstrapped venture with $5,000 in monthly recurring revenue, charging brands $250 per month and agencies $500 per month, plus a 1 per cent commission on milestone payments.
HustleSasa, founded in 2021 by Peng Chen and Michael Denuh through the Antler accelerator in Nairobi, provides event organisers with tools for ticketing, mobile-money and card payments, marketing, check-in, and merchandise sales. The platform now operates in Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, and South Africa, having processed more than 520,000 tickets and served over 4,000 clients. Its earlier investors include Musha Ventures, Microtraction, and Best Nights VC, the venture arm of Mast-Jägermeister. German investor Impacc took a stake in a recent undisclosed round as HustleSasa expanded into payments, commerce, and financing for event organisers. Impacc has noted that HustleSasa’s data suggests one gig worker is employed for every ten tickets sold, including security staff, catering teams, and technicians.
Book Mahali operates a marketplace for venue and equipment rentals in Kenya, connecting hosts with guests seeking spaces for creative and hospitality use. The platform handles discovery, payments, and paperwork, with hosts retaining the majority of each booking. It is the youngest of the three portfolio companies and the most directly consumer-facing, sitting at the intersection of hospitality and the creative economy rather than pure media technology.
The fund’s launch places it among a small but growing cohort of vehicles explicitly targeting Africa’s creative economy. In 2025, Nigerian music and entertainment group Chocolate City launched a $1 million Founders Fund for creative startups, offering equity investment and operational mentorship across music, film, and creative technology. Other initiatives, such as Founders Fund Africa’s $50,000 creative economy accelerator, have also emerged, though their scale remains modest relative to the continent’s creative-sector employment footprint, which some estimates place at roughly 8 per cent of jobs across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Corporate venture capital interest in the sector also exists but has been sporadic. Sony Innovation Fund Africa, the Africa-focused arm of Sony Group Corporation’s venture capital unit, has made a limited number of media-technology investments on the continent. In August 2025, it backed Twiva, a Kenyan creator monetisation platform that operates across influencer marketing, social commerce, skills development, embedded finance, and livestreaming. The same month, it co-invested alongside the International Finance Corporation in Filmmakers Mart, a Nigeria-based digital production platform that connects creatives with location scouting, logistics, catering, and permit acquisition services. Sony’s broader Africa investments have extended beyond media-tech, including participation in a $40 million round for stablecoin infrastructure provider Yellow Card in 2026. But deals of the Twiva and Filmmakers Mart variety remain infrequent, underscoring how few institutional investors have committed sustained capital to media-tech on the continent.
Aries has not disclosed the size of Fund I or the individual investment amounts in its first three portfolio companies. The firm’s ability to raise capital for a sector that has historically struggled to attract institutional venture backing will be a test of whether its thesis — that media innovation in emerging markets has been overlooked rather than unviable — can translate into returns. Kaba has acknowledged the scepticism he encounters. “I tell someone the thesis and they say, yes, this makes sense, I’m so glad you’re doing this. Or they’ll say I don’t believe that there’s growth in Africa,” he said.
For now, Aries is positioning itself as a bridge between two worlds it argues have remained disconnected: the capital and operational expertise concentrated in global media centres, and the founders building media-adjacent infrastructure for African markets. Whether that bridge proves durable will depend less on the fund’s stated thesis than on the commercial trajectories of the three companies it has already backed.