In April 2022, Five35 Ventures, a gender-focused venture capital firm, wrote certainly one of its first cheques to Whole Farmer, a Ghanaian agritech company that connects smallholder farmers to consumers, inputs and financing.
In March 2026, it offered its whole stake. Five35 says the sale returned 3.5 occasions its cash, an inner charge of go back of 38% over 4 years, and that Whole Farmer’s valuation rose from $6 million to $49 million over the similar duration.
Five35 is a pan-African fund that writes pre-seed and seed cheques into tech-enabled firms, that specialize in markets past the large 4 of Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and South Africa.
“We spend money on outstanding companies first, and the gender lens is helping us in finding lost sight of ones,” mentioned Hema Vallabh, Five35’s founding spouse. “Turning that price into realised returns for our traders is the true check of our luck. Over the following six to 18 months, we will be able to write larger cheques now that we have got an anchor, make investments extra in secondary markets, after which transfer into our harvest duration, the place we will be able to glance tougher at exits.”
Exits are uncommon in African challenge capital and rarer in agritech, in accordance to Briter, which calls go out routes the sphere’s tightest constraint, as fragmented provide chains and heavy operating capital wishes make it exhausting for firms to scale.
Vallabh, an engineer who based the ladies’s entrepreneurship platform WomHub, runs the fund with normal spouse Fatou Touré. Five35 used to be elevating $30 million in 2022. When the capital iciness hit, Vallabh reduce the objective and raised her first $1 million via cheques beginning at $35,000, most commonly from first-time traders. The Mastercard Basis Africa Enlargement Fund got here in as an anchor in overdue 2025, and she or he expects to near within the subsequent 3 to 6 months.
The sale used to be partially a business name and partially a strategic one: a first-time supervisor nonetheless elevating cash had to display traders it might go back money.
Vallabh explains underneath what Five35 way through a gender lens, why it offered its highest performer early, the way it raised cash as a first-time supervisor, and what feminine founders face after they pitch that the majority traders by no means see.
This interview has been edited for period and readability.
How do you make investments at the continent?
We make investments at pre-seed and seed in firms which are considerably tech-enabled, and we’re sector agnostic. We’re pan-African, with a larger center of attention on sub-Saharan Africa and a small allocation for North Africa. We spend money on the large 4 of South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Kenya, and we also are fascinated by secondary markets comparable to Ghana, Senegal and the DRC.
We make investments with a gender lens, and for us that is going past feminine founders. Our definition is ready intentionality. An organization will also be co-owned or co-led through ladies, with a lady in an actual management position comparable to CEO or CTO.
It may well have an deliberately feminine body of workers, with ladies unfold around the trade and now not handiest on the decrease ranges. Or it may have an deliberately feminine buyer base. The check is how we get extra ladies collaborating in financial task, residing higher lives and making more cash.
For the buyer base, the instance I exploit is a male founder who builds a maternal well being app. He’s intentionally serving ladies, and the ones ladies develop into more healthy and extra economically lively. We’re an absolutely gender-lens fund, and for each funding, it needs to be transparent why we believe it one.
Whole Farmer has a male founder. How does it suit your gender lens?
This can be a excellent instance of our thesis. Desmond is a male founder, however Whole Farmer is a B2B and B2C platform, and after we invested, about 55% to 60% of its consumers had been ladies. Girls additionally made up about 80% of its post-harvest body of workers.
On account of the platform, extra feminine farmers had been taking their produce to marketplace extra successfully and extra profitably. The fashion gave farmers a marketplace ahead of they planted, which made their source of revenue extra predictable and diminished waste. The gender have an effect on used to be constructed into what made it a commercially compelling trade.
Why did you construct Five35 round a gender lens?
I’ve labored on this house for twenty years. I’m an engineer grew to become entrepreneur grew to become investor. My first organisation used to be a non-profit that helped get extra ladies into engineering. I later grew to become it right into a business trade, WomHub, which nowadays works throughout ability, incubation and acceleration, co-working areas and capital.
Anyone who begins a fintech fund most often comes from banking. Gender is my specialisation. It’s the proper factor to do, and it is usually an lost sight of marketplace that time and again presentations higher returns. Our pipeline comes from the WomHub community and 20 years of labor, and our companions assist us strengthen founders in techniques different price range can’t.
At pre-seed and seed, you’re backing the founder greater than the numbers, for the reason that numbers don’t seem to be there but. Analysis presentations feminine founders are deprived at this level as a result of they don’t have compatibility the mildew.
Pitch competitions, to place it just a little facetiously, are designed for the very articulate white male American founder. A extra introverted founder won’t pitch as neatly and nonetheless be superb at construction her trade. This is the reason we want extra fund managers and funding committee participants who seem like the founders we wish to again.
You argue that gender-lens making an investment is business. On what foundation?
Our title comes from information. Analysis presentations that including extra feminine marketers to the African financial system may carry GDP through as much as 5%, and that numerous groups can ship a 35% upper go back than all-male groups when the enjoying box is point. Our task is to assist point it.
Our traders be expecting aggressive monetary returns, as they might from every other challenge fund. We compete for capital with gender-agnostic price range. We care about have an effect on, together with task advent, and we would like it along sturdy monetary returns.
You notice this in our portfolio. We first made 16 small investments, which I name our observe report developers, and Whole Farmer used to be certainly one of them. After our anchor funding, we made two new investments and 3 follow-ons. Now we have 18 investments and a nil according to cent failure charge. A couple of are suffering, and none has folded, and we’re in yr 4, going into yr 5. Those are unrealised positive factors, and the fund general sits at about 2x.
Agritech exits are uncommon. What did Whole Farmer do in a different way?
A part of it used to be planned, and a part of it used to be timing. Agritech is difficult to scale as a result of provide chains are fragmented, operating capital wishes are other, and operations are complicated.
Whole Farmer did greater than construct an app for farmers. It constructed a complete business provide chain platform that solved actual issues on each side of the marketplace. Connecting manufacturing to predictable call for used to be abnormal.
It additionally had sturdy management and robust execution, and it confirmed business viability quite early. I’m but to look an answer out there as entire as theirs. They have got competition in person verticals, and construction the overall platform is what units them aside.
Why did you make investments?
They met our core standards: pan-African, tech-enabled, early-stage, and gender lens. They had been fixing an issue on each side of the marketplace, and so they had a robust founder.
Desmond used to be now not positioning itself as a gender-lens corporate. After we appeared intently, the sturdy feminine buyer base used to be nearly incidental. We noticed some way so as to add price through serving to them make that intentional and through serving to with groups and governance. We had been a small investor operating along others, so I don’t declare his luck is on account of us. However we knew the place shall we assist an organization that used to be already rising strongly.
Why did you promote in March?
It used to be the proper time, and it made business sense. When Whole Farmer used to be elevating its subsequent spherical, we regarded as doubling down, however the valuation used to be past our vary. The rest shall we upload would were too small to subject.
We did speak about staying in for a larger go out later. We will be able to by no means know the way that might have grew to become out. There used to be additionally a strategic explanation why. Our goal as a fund is a minimum of thrice the cash on invested capital, and this go out exceeded it. As a first-time fund this is nonetheless fundraising and heading into its harvest duration, we had to display that we will ship exits. Going via an actual go out procedure used to be additionally a finding out revel in.
We didn’t promote as a result of we lacked religion within the corporate. They had been certainly one of our most powerful performers and also have doable. It used to be a business resolution, a fundraising resolution and a disciplined capital allocation resolution.
Who purchased your stake?
We can’t expose the consumer on account of confidentiality agreements. It used to be a secondary transaction, and we offered our whole place.
Which different portfolio firms are with reference to an go out?
We’re nonetheless in our funding duration, and our center of attention is on deploying capital and doubling down on our most powerful performers. We will be able to make investments reasonably aggressively over the following 18 months. We stay assessing liquidity, and every so often the marketplace approaches us to invite whether or not we will be able to promote a place, however we don’t seem to be actively chasing exits. Give us two or 3 years, after which we will be able to be pondering critically about them.
What strengthen do you give founders past capital?
We’re marketers making an investment in marketers, and we’ve got a structured price advent manner. We run portfolio group classes for peer finding out. Certainly one of our firms has made two acquisitions and walked the others via the way it did them. We additionally paintings with each and every corporate on what it wishes at this level, comparable to construction groups, governance buildings and methods.
Our anchor, the Mastercard Basis Africa Enlargement Fund, provides a 2d layer of technical help for our portfolio, each money and in-kind. Via us, firms comparable to Whole Farmer can achieve strengthen they wouldn’t differently get.
We additionally lead through instance at the gender lens. One feminine founder informed me she does now not think carefully about sending me a WhatsApp message at 10 pm, while she would fear about it being misinterpret if she despatched it to a male fund supervisor. The extent of sexual harassment feminine founders face when pitching is a systemic downside that we need to discuss, and many don’t really feel protected in rooms the place no one looks as if them.
I had a toddler within the final two and a part years, and I used to be fundraising whilst pregnant. Lots of our founders informed me they didn’t know that used to be conceivable. A feminine founder elevating whilst pregnant will get requested how dedicated she truly is or whether or not her existence will alternate after the child. A male founder hardly ever faces the ones questions. We construct strengthen for those realities into how we paintings, ahead of and when we make investments.
What used to be fundraising like as a first-time supervisor?
Tricky. Fund managers have to boost from LPs ahead of we will make investments, simply as founders lift to develop. Fatou and I are each first-time fund managers.
After I conceived Five35 round 2021, the marketplace used to be in its heyday, with numerous liquidity at the continent. Then the capital iciness hit. We began with formidable objectives, and we needed to adapt and goal for a smaller fund.
I went to my very own community first. I appeared for sturdy ladies, steadily executives, who had made cash and invested in assets or shares, or as angels, however had by no means regarded as challenge capital as an asset magnificence or invested as an LP.
Via what I name the 35 Membership, we took cheques from $35,000 upwards, most commonly from ladies, and raised our first $1 million. Small cheques from people would by no means get us to a fund of $15 million or $20 million, and so they allow us to make our first investments and construct a observe report. After we approached establishments, shall we solution the query each first-time supervisor will get: what’s your observe report?
That ended in our anchor funding from the Mastercard Basis Africa Enlargement Fund, and different traders got here in round it. We are actually in what we name the general circle, with a small allocation is left, and we are hoping to near within the subsequent 3 to 6 months. Would I’ve appreciated to boost extra? Sure. The marketplace has now not allowed it but.
How do you construction your investments?
We’re a natural fairness fund and don’t do debt. Our most well-liked early-stage device is a SAFE, and that’s how we first invested in Whole Farmer and maximum of our different firms.
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