South African startup Tennsa, an AI business intelligence platform built for SMEs, has become the first portfolio company of Oakvale Invest, Africa’s first AI-focused pre-seed fund.
The Cape Town-based Tennsa is building AI that works around people, on the conviction that this technology’s promise has always been to better lives and allow more time to be human. Its first product, Tennsa OS, is an always-on operational intelligence layer that connects to the systems a business already runs and reads them as one, surfacing what needs a decision and why, streamlining daily operations and allowing busy people to do more.
“Artificial intelligence is supposed to give people easier lives and more time to be human. Most of what has been built so far has not done that, and the reason is not the technology, it is where people have chosen to point it. At Tennsa, we are building around people rather than in place of them, so that a business owner spends less of their life holding the whole company in their head and more of it doing the work they actually want to do. Oakvale backed that at the stage most funds call too early,” said Rivar Maharaj, Tennsa’s founder.
The startup has now become the first investment of Oakvale Invest, which has invested more than ZAR1 million (US$61,000) in the company.
“We built Oakvale Invest to back AI companies on the African continent where capital is hardest to find. Tennsa is exactly what we are looking for – a young African founder, a product built for this market rather than imported into it, and the pace to get it in front of businesses fast. This is the first of many,” said Herman Ekdahl of Oakvale Invest.