Lapaire Glasses

Sector of activity: Health
Status: Investissement en capital
Associed fund: I&P Expansion, IPAE 2
Entrepreneur: Jérôme Lapaire, Louis Gascoin
Country: Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mali, Uganda, Togo
A propos:

Lapaire Glasses is a Kenyan eye care company and eyewear retail chain founded in 2018. It addresses a population until then excluded from the quality eye care market by offering free vision tests and prescription glasses starting at $30 (each pair of glasses costs between $30 and $100, with an average at $50), as well as premium customer service.

Today, Lapaire Glasses operates 20 optical stores across Africa and has over 150 employees. With the aim of becoming the most popular eyewear brand in Africa, Lapaire plans to open more clinics in major cities, as well as in rural areas.

 

Entrepreneurs

Graduated from the University of Geneva Law School, Jérôme Lapaire, a Swiss national and lawyer by profession, founded Lapaire Glasses in 2018 with his personal savings and money from friends, after realizing that access to quality eye care was a particularly burdensome problem in Kenya. The cost of an ophthalmological consultation, the time it takes and the price of prescription glasses are often too great a burden for a large proportion of the population. Gérôme Lapaire's portrait on LeTemps.ch

He is joined in this entrepreneurial adventure by Louis Gascoin, who holds an MBA from EDHEC Business School, specializes in operational excellence and distribution development, and has been based in Côte d'Ivoire since 2012, where he has built up solid professional experience in project development with multinationals such as Burger King, where he was General Manager from 2017 to 2020, and Servair as Head of Development and then Project Manager.

 

Partnership with I&P

Lapaire Glasses is supported by I&P through the I&P Afrique Entrepreneurs 2 (IPAE 2) fund, which is joined by AfricInvest in this round of financing. This partnership will help the company :

  • Open 250 additional stores in 3 years, including expansion into 5 new African countries;
  • Strengthen and structure management, operational teams and working capital for this new period of growth;
  • Strengthen the company's IT infrastructure.

 

Expected impact

  • Extend access to quality corrective eyewear and ophthalmic care to populations excluded from the conventional healthcare system ;
  • Job creation.
In portfolio since: 2023

Innovex

Sector of activity: Digital, Tech, Energy
Status: Financement d'amorçage
Entrepreneur: Douglas K. Baguma, David Tusuubira
Country: Uganda
A propos:

Innovex is a Ugandan company that has developed a smart meter coupled with an IoT solution that bridges the gap between solar energy providers/distributors and their last mile customers by giving the ability to remotely monitor, manage and turn on/off installed solar systems. This solution can be deployed in a variety of solar energy systems such as home systems, water pumps, cold chain storage and transportation systems, etc.

 

The entrepreneurs

Innovex was founded in 2015 by Douglas Baguma and David Tusubira with the purpose of creating technology equipment and solutions that remotely monitor the use and performance of off-grid solar energy.

Douglas K. Baguma has over six years of experience in the renewable energy industry and worked as a solar energy consultant on projects for the World Bank and the Center for Energy Conservation Research (CREEC) before establishing Innovex.

David Tusubira has accumulated extensive experience in several engineering fields, e.g., Internet of Things (IoT), automation, hardware, software development as Principal Investigator at iLabs@MAK at Makerere University (a Design, Art & Technology engineering college), where he conducted research projects and taught robotics (programming and basic electronics).

 

Partnership with I&P and Inua Capital

Innovex is supported by I&P Accélération Technologies, a €2.5 million program that aims to finance and support fifteen digital start-ups in Sub-Saharan Africa, supported by AFD through the Digital Africa initiative. In Uganda, Inua Capital is in charge of implementing this program.

This partnership will enable Innovex to: 

  • Scale its business model 
  • Expand its reach across Africa 
  • Diversify its product offering 

In portfolio since: 2022

Finance Trust Bank

Sector of activity: Micro-finance
Status: Sortie
Associed fund: IPAE 1
Entrepreneur: Anne Nakawunde
Employees: 537
Country: Uganda
A propos:

 

Finance Trust Bank (FTB), one of the oldest MFIs in Uganda, started its operations in 1984. The company is licensed and regulated by Bank of Uganda as a Micro Deposit Taking Institution (MDI) and is recognized as a key player and part of Uganda’s formal financial sector.  FTB has 36 interconnected branches positioned all over the country and serves over 140,000 customers with a variety of savings and loan solutions including business loans, salary loans, school fees loans, savings accounts, fixed deposits and a money transfer service through Western Union Money Transfer.

Its mission is to provide valued relevant financial services to low and medium income people, especially women, for poverty reduction with a focus on excellent customer service and accessibility.

 

 

THE ENTREPRENEUR

 

Anne Nakawunde is the Managing Director of Finance Trust Bank. Anne is a banker by profession with over 10 years’ practical experience in Banking and Microfinance. Previously she has worked in various capacities, at Finance Trust Bank as Head of Operations and Operations & Compliance Manager. Prior to Finance Trust Bank, Annet held various key positions at Pride Microfinance and Nile Bank Ltd.

holds a Master of Business Administration from Makere University, Kampala, with a major in finance. The Women’s World Banking network in New York recognized her as the "Financial Woman of the Year" in 2008.

 

 

PARTNERSHIP WITH I&P

 

I&P comitted alongside with FTB

• To bring strategic support

• To lead the operational comittee at the Board of Directors

 

KEY IMPACTS

• Access to credit and saving services for a large part of the population

• 173 743 individuals capitalize their savings at UFT

• 22 700 borrowers had their businesses funded in 2012

 

 

 

In portfolio since: 2013
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