Tips for adding Greenfield Projects to the Dashboard

Greenfield or Start-Up projects seeking capital present a particular challenge for investors since there is often no corporate financial or operational history on which to base their project evaluation.

However, there are certain groups of investors which specialise in investing in Greenfield or Start-Up projects, and there are some key parameters that they particularly investigate to assess upside potential and manage downside risk of new projects:

  1. The people who will be running the project – what is the management/board experience or special expertise in the sector that gives the business a high chance of success.
  2. The idea – do you have a financially robust business model and is the business scalable ie. what is unique about your business proposition and is it expandable in your region and potentially into countries?
  3. Your “skin in the game” – have you already committed your own funds to accumulate key assets in the company eg strategic land acquisition, patents, pilot plant, market studies and will you maintain your equity in the venture thereby sharing risk with investors.

Please keep these parameters in mind when uploading your project to the Dashboard. If you need help in addressing some of these parameters, it may be instructive to engage a local advisory group to help you put together a business plan and financial model. If you would like our help in recommending an advisor, please contact us at investments@africaninvestments.co

Below are some general tips for adding Greenfields opportunities to the Dashboard:

Guidelines for Adding a New Investment Proposition for a Greenfield Project
Click on the blue button at the top of the page: Add New Investment Proposition to open a fillable form:
Deal Name* This is an internal field for your use allowing you to identify each of your deals quickly. This field is not visible to investors. 120 characters
Snappy Investment Headline* A marketing-focused headline for the investment opportunity which is the first field seen by investors and should be short, informative and catchy eg. “Stimulating transformative development in rural East Africa through access to affordable power and internet” 255 characters
Country of Incorporation The country in which the entity requiring capital is registered. pick list
Country of Operation The country/ies in which the project is operating pick list
Business Sector The sector(s) which describe your company’s sector of operation (more than one can be selected) pick list
Sector (if not shown above) Type in your company’s sector of operation if it is not available in the picklist above 255 characters
Current Corporate Structure Advise whether the company seeking capital is a private company (unlisted) or a public listed company (listed on a stock exchange) or not yet established or another structure pick list
Contact Information for further details The person/persons who can be contacted if there is investor interest in your proposition – include a name and email address as a minimum 10,000 characters
Make the deal public – yes/no? * A deal marked public will be viewable by investors and AFSIC attendees.  Mark the deal as not public if the information on this form is incomplete or if the deal is not yet ready to show investors. Check box
Detailed Executive Summary* Provide a detailed description of your business proposition. You can include the history of the business, the reason for raising capital, proposed use of funds, your future business growth plans and your unique competitive advantage. You could point investors to your website to view a presentation or video about your business, or to a youtube address with a video explaining your proposition. 10,000 characters
Executive Team Summary Investors place a lot of emphasis on the team behind an investment proposition. Please use this space to highlight the strengths of your key team members – who you are, your relevant experience in this industry and why investors should back you. You can include links to your executive team’s LinkedIn profiles or to your website so that investors can check the CV’s for the key executive team members. 10,000 characters
Overview of Market You may wish to include more details on the market in which you operate, including market size, market growth rate locally and internationally, your competitive advantage and other matters of significance. 10,000 characters
Overview of Financial Performance You can include some summary financial projections in this box from your business’ cash flow model and summarise the company’s existing assets and liabilities. Investors are generally more comfortable to support businesses that are already operating profitably or demonstrating growth although there are specific investors who back start-ups and “venture capital” opportunities. As a minimum, please note whether financial statements can be made available for previous years, whether a full cash flow model can be made available to investors and provide a summary of the company’s assets and liabilities. 10,000 characters
Proposed Investment Transaction* This is where you outline to investors what capital you are seeking. Are you looking for debt or equity or another type of capital and under what terms? What is the size of investment required and note which currency you are quoting. How quickly do you need the funds? Any other transaction details can be added that can help an investor decide whether to engage with you or not on this project. 10,000 characters
Click on the Submit button and the project will be uploaded to the AFSIC Investor Dashboard database and one of our team will be in touch if there are any uploading issues or clarifications needed.

*Mandatory field