AFRICA – International telco, Orange has launched its venture capital arm, Orange Ventures, which will now operate as a separate legal entity with an increased allocation of €350 million (US$426 million), empowering it to be more agile and competitive in seeking out and supporting the best start-up talent worldwide.
“Our wish is to constitute an organisation which combines the best of both worlds: Orange’s business expertise as well as the agility of decision-making and the quality of the financial monitoring of the best investment funds,” Jérôme Berger, President and Managing Partner of Orange Ventures said.
“We closely support each start-up post-investment in order to contribute to its development and facilitate its direct and structured access to the Orange ecosystem whenever it is relevant.”
“Our wish is to constitute an organisation which combines the best of both worlds: Orange’s business expertise as well as the agility of decision-making and the quality of the financial monitoring of the best investment funds.”
Jérôme Berger – President and Managing Partner, Orange Ventures
Orange Ventures invests in high-growth sectors, in areas traditional to Orange expertise such as connectivity, cybersecurity, the digital enterprise, and innovative financial services, as well as new territories that the group is exploring, like e-health.
With offices in Paris and Dakar, Orange Ventures supports start-ups at all stages of maturity, from seed stage start-ups in Africa and the Middle East, to more mature companies in Europe and the United States, with investment tickets up to €20 million (US$24.33m) per financing round.
For Orange, the purpose of Orange Ventures is to promote the emergence of future technological champions who support the transition to an increasingly digital and responsible world, at the service of all, by sharing their innovation capabilities with its 256 million customers worldwide.
To achieve this, Orange Ventures differentiates by proposing a highly structured process for exploring and creating flexible and optional synergies between Orange and start-ups.
Orange Ventures aims to achieve the financial performance of the best venture capital investment companies and will make its investment decisions autonomously.
The Orange Ventures team, made up of twenty people, has thus been strengthened with established experts from the venture capital industry, and will also take over the management of the portfolio of the Orange Digital Ventures initiative launched in 2015.
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