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Zazu, a Cape Town-based FinTech startup for African small and medium enterprises, has raised an undisclosed amount of Seed funding from Launch Africa Ventures. The new backing marks the startup’s latest milestone as it works to build out a full finance operating system for entrepreneurs across the continent.
Co-founded by Germain Bahri and Rinse Jacobs in 2024, Zazu was built on the idea of making banking better for founders and SMEs. The startup bills itself as a “Finance OS” for African SMEs, offering business accounts, invoicing, spend management and bookkeeping tools designed to simplify day-to-day financial operations. The Cape Town-based startup’s stated mission is to build a finance solution that makes banking feel less like an obstacle and more like a catalyst for business growth.
“This is yet another milestone in a recent series of good news. Our continued focus to improve and refine our product, combined with rapid execution, has put us on the radar of the right VCs,” Bahri said on LinkedIn.
In his post, Bahri thanked Launch Africa’s team for their early belief in the company. He added that the deal allows Zazu to “move even deeper” toward its goal of reshaping financial services for African entrepreneurs, and stressed that the company is still building out what it considers baseline features even as it enters this next phase of growth.
Founded in 2020 by Zachariah George and Janade Du Plessis, Launch Africa Ventures is a pan-African venture capital fund that specialises in Seed and pre-Series A investing. The firm has more than 180 portfolio companies across its 2 funds and spanning 25 African countries, including some of Africa’s best-known FinTech pioneers, such as Flutterwave, Kuda, Djamo and Peach It recently revealed that it completed 15 new investments in 2026.Payments. It recently revealed that it completed 15 new investments in 2026.
While neither party disclosed the size of the round, Zazu joins Launch Africa Ventures’ Seed Fund II Portfolio, which also includes other FinTech players such as Agridex, CreditCircuit, Liquify, and VaulFi, among others. The deal comes on the heels of a busy June for Launch Africa Ventures, where it backed Agridex and distributed $2.5 million to the limited partners of its 2020-vintage Seed Fund I, after 11 exits pushed the fund into DPI-positive territory.
With Launch Africa now on its cap table, Zazu says it remains focused on refining its core offering while eyeing further opportunities beyond capital in the months ahead.
