Sergio Tati: From Football Pitches to Fintech, the Entrepreneur Formalizing Angola's Motorcycle Economy

Sergio Tati Nührmann has taken an unusually winding path to becoming one of Angola's most closely watched startup founders — one that runs through semi-professional football, fashion modeling, and Wall Street before arriving at a mobility-fintech venture reshaping how more than a million Angolans get to work every day.

A Global Upbringing

Tati was born in Cape Town, South Africa, to an Angolan mother and a German father, and spent his childhood moving across continents — living in Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Mexico, and Angola before relocating to Spain at age 15. His diverse background has become a defining feature of both his personal story and professional outlook, one he has described as central to his commitment to advancing Africa's role in the global economy.

In Spain, Tati pursued semi-professional football with one of Real Madrid's satellite teams while completing high school, where he was also scouted as a fashion model and appeared in an advertising campaign for Coca-Cola. He went on to study at IE Business School in Madrid, later becoming a Schwarzman Scholar with additional studies at Harvard College and Tsinghua University.

A Detour Through Finance

Before founding his own company, Tati built experience in traditional finance, holding roles at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Realty Corporation Ltd. That background in structured finance and capital markets would later inform the design of Anda's core business model: using flexible financing to help everyday workers build ownership and credit history in markets largely outside the formal banking system.

Building Anda

Tati co-founded Anda, now Angola's leading mobility-fintech company, built around a vertically integrated model combining vehicle access, driver training, digital systems, and strategic partnerships. The company provides motorcycles and three-wheelers to vetted drivers through a lease-to-own financing structure, while its Anda Academy offers road safety and customer service training — aiming to formalize a vast informal transport sector that Tati and his team see as central to daily economic life across the country.

In November 2025, Anda raised €3 million (approximately $3.5 million) in seed funding, co-led by European venture capital firms Breega and Speedinvest — one of the largest early-stage investments in Angola's still-emerging tech scene. "Capital isn't flowing easily into young markets right now, so this support means a lot," Tati said following the raise. "For us, this is about mobility and dignity. Riders deserve a fair shot at ownership, stability, and a future they can plan for."

A Market Long Overlooked

The funding round is notable partly because most venture capital flowing into Africa has historically gone to English-speaking markets like Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, leaving Portuguese-speaking countries like Angola comparatively overlooked. Anda's raise offers a data point suggesting that may be starting to shift, particularly given the scale of the opportunity: more than 1.2 million motorcycle-taxi operators serve as a backbone of daily transport across Angola, supporting everything from school runs to market deliveries in cities where formal public transport infrastructure remains limited.

With its new capital, Anda has said it plans to expand its fleet and driver training programs across Luanda, extend operations into additional Angolan provinces, and eventually explore entry into neighboring markets such as Mozambique.

A Founder Shaped by Movement

Tati's own description of his path — an Angolan-German upbringing spanning multiple continents, sport, modeling, and international finance before returning to build a company rooted in his mother's home country — mirrors the throughline of Anda's mission: creating structured pathways to ownership and stability for people navigating informal, often precarious economic systems. As Anda continues to scale, Tati's blend of finance background and lived, cross-continental experience positions him as one of the more distinctive founders to watch in Africa's next wave of mobility and fintech ventures.