Madica Gets $6M from Flourish to Extend Pre-Seed

In Short

Madica has secured an additional US$6 million from Flourish Ventures. The funding extends Madica’s pre-seed investment programme by three years.

What Happened

Madica said it plans to invest in 25 to 30 more African start-ups. It also plans to expand support for founders who are often overlooked by traditional VC networks.

The funding builds on Madica’s initial investment pilot. Since its launch in 2022, the pilot has backed 18 start-ups across 10 African countries and 12 sectors. Madica said the pilot paired early-stage capital with hands-on business support.

Madica said the extension will give it more time to test whether its model can help overlooked founders achieve sustained growth and generate VC returns. It said the findings are expected to inform future investment decisions and offer lessons for other investors looking at Africa’s underfunded start-up markets.

“Madica was launched as an experiment to test whether pairing capital with hands-on company-building support could help overlooked founders building world-class businesses generate venture outcomes,” said Emmanuel Adegboye, head of Madica. “From the outset, we knew that gathering meaningful evidence would require years of investment, support and learning.”

Adegboye said the programme’s early years had produced encouraging signals, but that building lasting companies takes longer.

Madica said companies in its existing portfolio have gone on to raise, on average, twice the amount of its initial investment in follow-on funding. It described this as an early sign of investor confidence, but said the start-ups still need to show sustained commercial growth and longer-term returns.

The portfolio spans sectors including AI, climate technology, semiconductors, biotechnology, human resources and mobility.

Why It Matters

Madica is positioning the extension as a longer test of whether combining pre-seed cheques with hands-on support can produce sustained growth and venture returns. If the model holds across a broader set of companies, Madica says the resulting evidence could help other investors decide where to allocate capital in Africa’s underfunded start-up markets.