Five35 Ventures posts 3.5x return on Complete Farmer exit
Five35 Ventures has reported a 3.5 times return on its investment in Ghanaian agritech company Complete Farmer, marking a documented VC exit from a locally headquartered startup. The result provides a concrete performance data point for Ghana's early-stage investment ecosystem and the viability of local venture capital.
Five35: what a first-time manager actually had to prove
Five35 sold Complete Farmer — its best-performing company — not because it had run out of upside, but because it needed to show first-time investors that the money comes back.
That's the uncomfortable mechanics behind the headline number. A 3.5x return is real and documented. But it was also, by Hema Vallabh's own account, a strategic sale timed to unlock the rest of her fundraise. The Mastercard Foundation anchor only arrived in late 2025; without a realised exit on the books, that conversation likely doesn't happen.
For Ghana's ecosystem, this is what early-stage investing actually looks like when you're building from scratch — not a clean thesis executed on its own terms, but proof of concept assembled one $35,000 cheque at a time, with the exit decision shaped as much by what LPs need to see as by what the company could still become.
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- How Five35 Ventures made 3.5 times its investment on Complete Farmer · techcabal.com · T1