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Fearless Fund has made a big move since it settled a lawsuit with the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER).
The firm announced on Thursday a seven-figure investment into the e-commerce platform Zimi, co-founded by Audrey Djiya and Peter Nsaka. Zimi offers inventory management, handling and storage, and border logistics specifically to help businesses in emerging markets, like Africa, sell to the rest of the world. The company officially launched in August and already has a few clients, according to its website.
Fearless Fund’s CEO and co-founder Arian Simone declined to reveal the exact investment figure. This marks back-to-normal for the firm, which is investing out of its second fund and which received a multi-million-dollar follow-on investment last summer, TechCrunch previously reported.
The investment news comes just weeks after Fearless Fund settled a lawsuit filed against it by the AAER. The AAER claimed that a grant that Fearless Fund created for Black women entrepreneurs discriminated against non-Black founders. Fearless Fund spent a year fighting the lawsuit, resulting in a preliminary injunction being upheld against the grant program. One of the firm’s co-founders, Ayana Parsons, stepped down from her leadership role during this time. Last month, Fearless Fund and AAER came to a settlement agreement that would see to the end of the grant program, ensuring that the case didn’t make its way to trial and causing a domino effect that could impact other grant programs that service marginalized founders.
Simone says the firm has been doing well since the settlement and is “investing in companies and continuing our mission of funding entrepreneurs.”
She added that the firm has completed “multiple investments this year and is actively diligencing numerous opportunities.” It recently announced a $200 million debt fund in partnership with a CDFI to offer loans between $5,000 and $250,000 to overlooked founders. She said that Fearless Fund remains focused on its mission to support women of color founders and is looking to back more fintech, beauty, and companies working in logistics. The deal with Zimi closed in late September.
Zimi’s CEO Djiya told us that the company is still in the process of raising its round, which is expected to close soon. The company took part in this year’s spring Y Combinator cohort and, like all YC grads, received investment from YC as well. Djiya said that Fearless Fund reached out to Zimi about an investment and that the company decided to bring Fearless Fund on as its lead investor because Simone experienced firsthand the challenge Zimi is trying to fix and they believe that the best investors are those who understand the problem a company is trying to solve.
“Further, Fearless’ experience with working with consumer brands, who we’re building for, and international presence, will be helpful to Zimi in the long run,” Djiya continued. “We also really love the team.”
The company plans to use the fresh capital to hire more in operations and engineering and grow the consumer base, and plans to implement more artificial intelligence.
