Alan, the French health insurance company, has acquired Tanel, a Dakar-based digital health startup operating in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, for an undisclosed amount that marks its first move into Africa.
The transaction closed in June and gives Ventures Platform, AAIC Investment, and a group of angel investors a full exit and breaks almost every pattern the African exit market has recently shown.
The deal reinforces that African startups can be built for global acquisition: Tanel sold to an investor it had spent two years reporting to, from a market missing entirely from Africa’s exit data.
“The plan was to raise the Series A earlier this year, and then Alan reached out, and we ran a dual process,” Mouhamed Ndoye, Tanel’s CEO, said in an interview with TechCabal. “At some point we realised that going through the acquisition with Alan was more interesting for us, given the opportunity to expand across Africa.”
Originally published by TechCabal.