Chinese venture capital bet heavily on Africa, too

Less than two months ago, my colleague wrote this post about Zhou Yahui’s call for Chinese entrepreneurs to go to Africa.

Now OPay, affiliated to Opera which Zhou controls, has raised US$120 million from a series of Chinese investors.

You need to pay attention to the line up: Meituan-Dianping, SourceCode Capital, IDG Capital, GSR, Sequoia China, Gaorong, Softbank Asia, BAI and Redpoint China Ventures.

This is barely a few months after the announcement of a US$50 million round led by Sequoia China, IDG Capital, and SourceCode Capital.

As we mentioned in our previous article:

“However, both businesses had to pivot after Zhou made its inroads into the same sector. Ultimately, Zhou’s financial power, ability to attract good talent, as well as the existing user base of Opera, were advantages pretty hard to match by any other Chinese entrepreneur.”