Five35 Ventures Exits Complete Farmer With 3.5x Return

Five35 Ventures, a venture capital firm with a distinct gender-lens investment strategy, has successfully divested its stake in Ghanaian agritech firm Complete Farmer, realizing a 3.5x return on its initial investment. This significant exit, achieved over a four-year holding period, underscores the commercial viability of targeted investments in Africa's burgeoning technology sector, particularly within agriculture.

The transaction saw the valuation of Complete Farmer surge from approximately $6 million at the time of Five35 Ventures' initial investment in April 2022 to $49 million by March 2026. This growth trajectory highlights the increasing sophistication and potential for substantial returns within African agritech, a sector often perceived as capital-intensive and facing complex supply chain challenges. The internal rate of return (IRR) for Five35 Ventures on this deal reached an impressive 38%.

Five35 Ventures, co-founded by Hema Vallabh and Fatou Touré, focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage, tech-enabled companies across sub-Saharan Africa, with a strategic emphasis on markets beyond the continent's major hubs. The firm's unique approach integrates a gender lens, seeking out businesses that demonstrably enhance economic participation for women, whether through leadership roles, workforce composition, or customer base. In the case of Complete Farmer, a male-founded company, the gender impact was evident in its customer base, with women comprising 55-60% of users, and its post-harvest workforce, where women represented approximately 80%.

“Turning that value into realised returns for our investors is the real test of our success,” stated Hema Vallabh, a founding partner at Five35 Ventures. This successful exit provides crucial validation for the firm's strategy, particularly as it navigates fundraising efforts. Five35 Ventures secured its first $1 million in capital, with initial checks as small as $35,000, primarily from first-time investors, and later welcomed the Mastercard Foundation Africa Growth Fund as an anchor investor in late 2025. The firm anticipates closing its current fundraise in the coming months.

The decision to exit, while commercially driven by the strong return, also served a strategic purpose for Five35 Ventures. As a relatively new fund manager, demonstrating capital deployment and successful exits is vital for attracting further investment. This achievement is particularly noteworthy in the African venture capital ecosystem, where exits, especially within the agritech space, are historically less frequent due to structural market complexities.

Five35 Ventures' commitment to gender-lens investing is rooted in extensive research indicating that greater female entrepreneurial participation can significantly boost GDP and that diverse teams often outperform homogenous ones. The firm leverages its network, including its sister organization WomHub, to identify and support founders who may not fit traditional investment molds, thereby unlocking overlooked opportunities and driving both social and financial returns.