A TEAM EXPERIENCED IN RISK
MsFiT Ventures general partners (GPs), Egla Ntumba and Jill Curr, have worked together for four years as senior investment team members in the African venture capital (VC) industry. The GPs have an extensive wealth of experience investing in private and listed equities as well as debt on the African continent. They are leveraging more than two decades of combined experience as SME operators, VC investors, and corporate trade financiers to disrupt the $330B annual SME funding gap and the $120B annual infrastructure gap on the continent by tailoring trade finance solutions to SME cash flows to create above-average fund returns.
Egla Ntumba
Managing Partner
Egla is an ex-SME operator, turned debt and equity investor. Prior to MsFiT, she operated an SME for eight years and led the retail store expansion strategy. She then joined Standard Chartered as a corporate banker where she deployed $1B+ in trade finance and managed a debt portfolio of large multinational corporations (like Afreximbank, FirstRand Group, Coca Cola, DHL, Reckitt Benckiser) across East, West, and Southern Africa. Later, she joined Newtown Partners as a senior venture capital investor where, on behalf of DP World’s corporate innovation fund, she invested in disruptive technology startups in supply chain, logistics, and healthcare.
Jill Curr
Managing Partner
Jill is a seasoned dealmaker with a decade of investment experience in venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds in Africa. During her five years at Newtown Partners (NP), she was the lead dealmaker and deployed $10M+ in seven Seed and Series A transactions in Africa and Latin America in various industries including healthcare, e-commerce, and agritech. She has acted as a board observer for five startups and worked closely with founders on strategy development, transaction structuring, and advisory. Jill led NP Fund I’s exit strategy and secured a roll-up exit for an early-stage last-mile delivery startup with a regional logistics champion in Latin America.
MsFiT ADVISORY BOARD
MsFiT managing partners are supported by a diverse team of unconventional thinkers.
Janade du Plessis
Fund Management Advisor
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Janade is the co-Founder & Managing Partner at Launch Africa Ventures. Launch Africa is the most active venture capital firm on the continent which provides MsFiT access to proprietary deal flow with a great need for flexible working capital. Janade has a wealth of South African-specific fund management experience across venture capital and private equity as well as 25 years of experience in financial services on the continent. Over his 25 year career in financial services, he has invested in more than 250 startups across 25 African countries.
Claire Busetti
SME Financing Advisor
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Claire is an advisor to the Eskom Pension and Provident Fund’s (EPPF) strategic investment committee (IC). She has two decades of SME and development finance experience from her time as a board member at Spartan SME Finance (structured SME financier), board & IC member at the National Empowerment Fund (SME business loan provider), investment committee member at Vumela Development Fund (venture debt provider), and Gauteng Enterprise Propeller (SME funder).
Sandrine Henton
Mezzanine Capital Advisor
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Sandrine is the Founder & General Partner at EG Capital, a $100M mezzanine private equity fund that invests between $5M and $10M in debt and/ or equity in established medium-sized businesses. EG Capital represents a potential partial exit route for MsFiT’s SMEs by being a future investor in the Fund’s SMEs. Sandrine has decades of private capital experience with a deep understanding of impact investing and providing debt products to traditional African businesses.
Marie Therese
Venture Building Advisor
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Marie Therese is an Investment Committee Member at Five35 Ventures, a South African venture capital firm that invests in women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). From her five years as the Managing Partner at Flat6Labs and through consulting work with other venture capital funds, Marie has an extensive background in venture building and early-stage strategy development on the continent