Recently, Bravura published an article which highlighted the need for African early stage businesses to secure financing in order to grow beyond their “promise” to deliver practical solutions that will fuel Africa’s growth. It is in this context that Bravura is proud to announce its role as the corporate advisor to Pan-African Internet Exchange Data Centres (“PAIX”), a provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral colocation data centre services, in closing the first tranche of their Series B funding round with the Africa50 Infrastructure Fund.
The USD 20-million Series B round forms the first tranche of PAIX’s Series B financing by Africa50 and is targeted by PAIX to fund the expansion of their modular data centre design to meet Africa’s rapidly growing digital markets. The successful conclusion of this funding round signifies PAIX’s evolution from a “concept” company to a “scale and growth” player in the African region.
With a population of over 1.3 billion people, of which approximately 50% are below 25 years of age, Africa is one of the world’s fastest growing digital markets. Following the announcement by Google and Facebook of new sub-sea fibre connectivity to the continent, it is expected that regional sub-sea cable bandwidth capacity to the region will increase by 14.5 times within the next five years, to over 400Tbps (terabytes per second). The result is likely to be a dramatic reduction in the cost of data, with a resultant exponential growth in digital access by the region’s consumers.
Founded in 2016 by data centre entrepreneur Wouter van Hulten, PAIX’s core business is the development and operation of world-class, secure and reliable data centres in the underserved digital markets of East and West Africa.
PAIX’s ambition is to be the heart of Africa’s digital economy, with its datacentres serving as central hubs. PAIX seeks to achieve this through the provision of world class facilities that offer low latency, proximity to content and scalable bandwith to meet diverse customer requirements. Within these cloud- and carrier-neutral datacentres, “communities of interest” form where business partners connect to each other, and as a consequence the datacentre becomes a revenue opportunity for them, instead of a cost centre.
Having established a presence in both East and West Africa following a successful USD 6-million Series A capital raise and venture funding, PAIX continues to work with its current and prospective connectivity customers to identify multiple expansion opportunities throughout the sub-Saharan region. With a proven business model and readily actionable expansion opportunities, PAIX appointed Bravura to assist in identifying a capital partner with aligned ambitions and the necessary capital to further develop PAIX’s business.
Bravura identified Africa50 as being strongly aligned to PAIX’s ethos and strategic vision. With deep understanding of the challenges and rewards of working on the continent, Africa50 holds a long-term ambition to grow Africa’s digital infrastructure, combined with the necessary focus and understanding of how to build and scale businesses into rapidly growing markets.
In working with Bravura, Wouter van Hulten explained that both the Bravura and PAIX teams worked closely throughout the process: “From the get go, Bravura was involved in all aspects of our engagement with investors, from assisting PAIX with the commercial articulation of our go-to-market strategy, to active engagement on management strategy and ultimately guiding us through the negotiation phase and towards the successful conclusion of the transaction.”
Bravura is proud to have worked with PAIX in identifying a long-term partner and closing a transaction within a sector that offers such significant development potential for the African region.
More information on PAIX: www.paix.io
