eleni

What eleni does

eleni is a Nairobi, Kenya-based for-profit company founded in 2012 that focuses on building markets in Africa, providing capital, technology solutions, and design and management services for market infrastructure. The company was founded by Eleni Gabre-Madhin, the founder of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, and is led by a small executive team (1-10 employees) comprising a CEO, CBDO (Martin Fleurant), CIO (Hamere Demissie), and CTO (Jawad Ali). The company has raised institutional capital, including a $5,000,000 round in January 2013 led by International Finance Corporation and Morgan Stanley, and a follow-on investment from 8 Miles Capital in June 2013.

eleni's business model centers on project-based engagements with African governments, institutions, and market participants to design, finance, and operate market infrastructure. The "capital, technology, and design/management" framing indicates a bundled services platform rather than a pure product sale, and the inclusion of a technology solutions component suggests software or platform elements are part of the offering. GTM is relationship-driven, leveraging the founding team's reputation and institutional investor networks, consistent with the B2B/B2G nature of market-building mandates. Specific product modules, pricing, and customer disclosures are not available in the input data, and the most recent verifiable operating signal remains the 2013 funding activity.

Name

eleni

Legal name

乐鱼网页版leyu登录界面_乐鱼leyu（中国）

Website

https://eleniexchanges.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2018

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

eleni is a Nairobi-based, for-profit firm founded in 2012 that builds markets in Africa by providing capital, technology solutions, and design and management services to institutional and governmental clients across the continent.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Nairobi

HQ country

Kenya

HQ region

Africa

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Certification Consulting Services: The company provides professional consulting services to help businesses obtain various certifications and production licenses. Revenue is generated through consulting fees for services including product certification consulting (CCC, CQC, CB, CE, GS, UL), system certification consulting (ISO9001, ISO14001, ISO22000, GMPC, OHSAS18000), and production license consulting (cosmetics, food, industrial products, disinfection products). The business model involves project-based consulting engagements with clients across multiple industries.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels2 records

Marketing channels4 records

Core offering

eleni focuses on building markets in Africa, providing capital, technology solutions, and the design and management of exchange market infrastructure. The firm operates a commodity exchange platform that connects market participants and delivers end-to-end market services across African jurisdictions.

Product overview

Eleni (乐鱼网页版leyu登录界面_乐鱼leyu（中国）) is a comprehensive certification consulting company based in Guangzhou, China, offering a unified portfolio of consulting services. The company provides 19 distinct service offerings organized into four main categories: (1) Production License Certification Consulting covering cosmetics, industrial products, food, and disinfectant products; (2) Product Certification Consulting including CCC, CQC, CB, CE, GS, and UL certifications for domestic and international markets; (3) System Certification Consulting including ISO9001, ISO14001, ISO22000, GMPC, and OHSAS18000; and (4) Other Support Services including enterprise standard filing, testing equipment metrology, clean room decoration, and professional instrument sales consulting. The company serves multiple industries including cosmetics, food, disinfection products, sanitary products, electronics, and packaging materials.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Market Building and Design Services
• Exchange Technology Solutions
• Capital Deployment and Market Incubation

Named customers10 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Scale indicators1 record

Recent moves4 records

Expansion highlights3 records

Broad incumbents

• Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX): NGX is a West African exchange operator providing trading infrastructure for equities, fixed income, and commodities in Nigeria, with plans to deepen pan-African linkages. It overlaps with eleni as a multi-asset exchange operator serving African commodity and capital markets.
• Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE): The JSE is Africa's largest and most diversified exchange operator, offering commodities, equities, and derivatives trading infrastructure across multiple African markets. It is comparable as a broad incumbent exchange operator whose multi-asset platform overlaps with eleni's exchange-design ambitions, though at a much larger, established scale.

Emerging players

• Cellulant: Cellulant is a pan-African digital payments and financial technology platform serving agricultural value chains, banks, and governments across more than 30 African countries. It overlaps with eleni at the intersection of agricultural commerce, technology infrastructure, and African market digitization, though it focuses on payments rather than exchange design.

Others

• Africa Finance Corporation (AFC): AFC is a pan-African development finance institution that provides capital and infrastructure-financing solutions across the continent. It is comparable as an institutional capital provider for African market infrastructure and trades hands with the same DFI/investor ecosystem eleni operates within.
• Standard Bank Group (Commodity Trading & Markets): Standard Bank is Africa's largest bank by assets and operates a substantial commodity-trading, financing, and market-services franchise across the continent. It is an adjacent participant in African commodity value chains whose market-making and trade-finance activities shape the demand environment for organized commodity exchanges like those eleni designs.

Direct peers

• AFEX (Africa Exchange): AFEX operates commodity warehousing and exchange infrastructure across multiple African countries, providing trading, storage, and market-linkage services to smallholder producers and buyers. It is the most directly comparable operating African commodity exchange builder/operator in eleni's category.
• Agricultural Commodity Exchange for Africa (ACE): ACE operated a warehouse-receipt and market-information system for smallholder farmers in Malawi and Zambia, providing structured trading and price-discovery services. It is directly comparable as a regional African agricultural commodity exchange / market-infrastructure operator.
• Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX): ECX is the African commodity exchange originally architected by eleni founder/CEO Eleni Gabre-Madhin and serves as the proof-of-concept blueprint for eleni's market-design franchise. As eleni seeks to replicate the ECX model in other African countries, ECX functions as both a precedent and a benchmark peer.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights5 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/eleniLLC
• Facebookfacebook.com/193085080839935

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles4 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds2 records

Investors3 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about eleni