We are delighted to announce that Sanari Capital, investment partners to LightWare LiDAR, has won special recognition at this year’s Private Equity Africa (PEA) Awards for its investment in LightWare LiDAR. Sanari took the award for Best Technology Deal in the African market.

This award recognizes the remarkable talent that the African continent has to offer the world and emphasizes the growing importance of technology and Africa’s role in this space. The award also recognizes extraordinary investment partnerships that are contributing to the global technology agenda.

CEO of LightWare LiDAR LLC, Phil Constantine says ‘’we as LightWare are extremely proud to be associated and recognized for such a prestigious award, which stands as testament to the success of our partnership with Sanari Capital. Throughout our engagements, the LightWare management team felt that partnering with Sanari Capital would be the perfect decision. This is because Sanari has developed a track record of targeting high-potential companies, helping them embrace corporate best practice and building businesses that are Sustainable, Scalable and Saleable. We also look forward to more success in the future, taking comfort in our joint vision for success.  

Already established as a leading global player in the high growth LiDAR sensory technology space, LightWare gives ‘eyes to machines’, designing and manufacturing the world’s smallest and lightest precision LiDAR systems for use in drones, robots, IoT and industrial IoT, smart cities and other applications. Sanari’s investment in LightWare LiDAR expands this African tech on a world platform, with rapid innovation and new product rollout to meet the ever-growing number of use cases for small LiDARs.

CEO of Sanari Capital, Samantha Pokroy, says “we cannot be more pleased with this partnership and recall how challenging it was to pull off this investment in the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic crisis midway through the transaction introduced tremendous uncertainties. Although the company experienced short term supply and demand disruptions and travel restrictions slowed momentum, we were able to assess that the medium to long term net impact would be positive for the company as digitization and the low-touch economy accelerated globally. Much gratitude to the team at Sanari, our supportive investors and the incredible executives at LightWare LiDAR; James Portman, Nadia Nilsen and Philip Constantine.”

In their 10th year, the PEA awards are the ultimate accolade of success in the African Private Equity industry, garnering participation from key players across the continent. The final winners were selected by an independent panel of 20 judges which included representation from CDC, DEG, IFC, EBRD, fund-of-funds and family offices.

The winners were announced virtually on 30 November 2021. The PEA 2021 Awards Gala Dinner – which will jointly celebrate the 2020 and 2021 award winners – will be held in London in 2022.

• Click here for a complete list of 2021 Private Equity Africa (PEA) Awards winners.