Plug and Play revealed that it was entering the South African market. As a distinguished Silicon Valley accelerator, the venture capital firm will set up its innovation platform in Johannesburg. They were fortunate enough to have invested early in startups such as Logitech, Google, and PayPal. Their announcement was made in the recent Covid-19 webinar series.
Grace Legodi, an investment banker working at Goldman Sachs is poised to head their Plug and Play office in South Africa. This will be their 37th location on the planet.
Allison Romero, the marketing director at Plug and Play, confirmed the development to Ventureburn through email. The accelerator aims for offices in Johannesburg and Morrocco. She further explained, “We are still in the early stages of launching” no official dates had been set for the official ouster. They also expressed interest in other cities such as Durban and Cape Town. However, the investment decisions will be guided by a need to basis.
Plug and Play have over 20,000 startups under their umbrella, 400 corporate partners, and 180 venture capital firms within their network. The company is undeterred by the COVID-19 challenge, however, they find this as an opportunity to solve challenging societal problems. They would like to invite the largest banks, entrepreneurs, universities, conglomerates as well as the South African government into their vision.
They aspire to nurture hundreds of startups into large companies of the future while basing their operations in South Africa as they slowly spread across the continent.
