Tennsa, a Cape Town startup building AI-powered business intelligence software for small and mid-sized enterprises, has raised more than ZAR1 million, equivalent to approximately $61,000, from Oakvale Invest, which describes itself as Africa's first AI-focused pre-seed fund, according to Disrupt Africa. The investment makes Tennsa the first company in Oakvale's portfolio.
Tennsa's current product, called Tennsa OS, connects to the existing software systems a business already runs and presents a unified view of operational data, surfacing decisions that need attention and the context behind them. The company's stated design principle is to reduce the information management burden on business owners rather than automate their roles.
Rivar Maharaj, Tennsa's founder, described the product philosophy and why the Oakvale backing matters at this stage:
"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."
Herman Ekdahl of Oakvale Invest described the criteria behind the firm's first deployment of capital:
"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."
