PEV Closes $1m Pre-seed Round // Plans to Supercharge Responsible Tourism in Africa

Purple Elephant Ventures Closes $1m Pre-seed Round // Plans to Supercharge Responsible Tourism in Africa

Purple Elephant Ventures (PEV), the world’s first tourism-focused venture studio, announced today that it has closed a pre-seed round of $1M USD from a group of well-known global investors. 

Tourism, Africa’s third-largest industry and employer of tens of millions across the continent, suffered tremendously during the Covid pandemic and is highly vulnerable to the effects of the changing climate. 

“We’re sitting on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to modernize a major continental industry while driving real climate-action victories,” says CEO Ben Peterson, who set up the venture studio in partnership with co-founders Jan

Van der de Willebois, a former investment banker at Dyer & Blair where he led the Safaricom IPO, and serial entrepreneur Mikul Shah who is best known for his work in the hospitality industry with EatOut Africa. 

Purple Elephant Ventures is the world’s first tourism-focused venture studio.

In his previous role as Senior Partner at AHL Venture Partners, one of Africa’s leading early stage investment firms, Peterson saw a big opportunity. “Tourism is a significant driver of Africa’s economy, but sadly there have been only a small handful of start-ups that have tried to modernize the largely offline industry. We decided that the industry could benefit from dozens of start-ups each addressing different major challenges – so we built PEV.” 

PEV’s goal is to build three or four start-ups every year, designed to lead Africa’s tourism industry towards a greener future. PEV start-ups are typically scalable, tech-first solutions that supercharge urgent efforts to make Africa’s tourism industry more resilient and more sustainable in the face of climate change. 

Investors in PEV’s Pre-Seed round include: Klister Credit Corp., a Canadian investment firm and early backer of Shopify; Fede Pirzio-Biroli, founder of Playfair Capital; Ian McCaig, former CEO of lastminute.com and M-Kopa board member; Anthony Rock, President of Rock Impact Capital; The Untours Foundation; Rich Hoops, Executive Director at Impact Capital; Jim Villanueava, Managing Director of Global Partnerships Social Venture Fund; and Helena Riese Harstad, Co-founder and Chair of the Optimizer Foundation. 

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To date, PEV has launched two start-ups. One is Nomad Africa, a content-to-commerce business that informs Africa’s domestic tourism market about sustainable and local travel experiences. The other is Elephant Bookings, a SaaS business that helps African hospitality providers become more efficient by getting online. 

To learn more about Purple Elephant Ventures, please visit our website at www.purpleelephant.ventures, or on LinkedIn or email us at info@purpleelephant.ventures.

About Purple Elephant Ventures

Africa’s natural capital is under threat. Population growth, rapid industrialization, agricultural expansion, less rainfall & rising temperatures all put pressure on Africa’s natural – and fragile – ecosystems.

The ONLY way to protect and grow Africa’s natural capital is to make sure local communities and governments have sustainable financial incentive to protect it.

The ONLY industry that can do this is tourism; it’s Africa’s third largest sector by GDP and derives 90%+ of its revenue from Africa’s natural attractions. Purple Elephant Ventures builds innovative, scalable and profitable start-ups to make this a reality.

PEV is a team of creative business builders brought together by a passion for African travel and combatting climate change.

The company starts multiple businesses per year, each of which protect & grow Africa’s natural capital while making travel and tourism in African tourism more accessible, more genuine, more affordable and just plain better.

PEV also runs each start-up idea through vigorous data-driven processes. With a vision of leading Africa’s tourism industry to a greener future, the company seeks to build a portfolio of innovative companies that unlock the unrivaled economic power of tourism to protect and grow Africa’s natural capital