Clarity Training was founded on a simple insight: most operational issues stem not from lack of skill, but from unclear communication.

Whether it’s poorly written emails, confusing client calls, or misaligned internal messaging, ineffective communication costs teams time, money, and trust. Their communication skills training workshops tackle this head-on through a practical, results-driven approach to corporate communication skills training.

Participants learn to structure their messages clearly, write concise business emails, and conduct productive meetings that stay on point.

For teams that interact with clients, the workplace communication skills training emphasises tone, professionalism, and confidence — helping participants represent their company’s brand with precision.

One of Clarity Training’s standout features is its interactive communication workshops, where participants practise real-world scenarios instead of listening to theory.

Trainers provide live feedback on body language, word choice, and listening habits. The result? Teams walk away not just with better communication habits, but with a unified way of expressing ideas across departments and stakeholders.

The impact is immediate: smoother collaboration, faster decision-making, and stronger client relationships. For African startups and corporates alike, this edge is invaluable.

As the continent’s tech ecosystem continues to expand, those who communicate with clarity will be the ones who lead with influence.

Ozow

This South African payment gateway closed a $48 Series B round last week. The round was led by Chinese technology conglomorate, Tencent, with Endeavor Catalyst and Endeavor Harvest Fund also participating in the round.

Ozow are going to use the capital to build alternative payment solutions for millions of merchants and consumers.

They launched in South Africa in 2014 with a simple aim - to connect internet banking to ecommerce, point-of-sale, e-billing or P2P methods. Before then the customer experience in South African ecommerce was fragmented and sloppy. EFTs only represented about 4% of the volume of sales in ecommerce stores.

Since Ozow entered the market that volume has grown to an average of about 30%, and EFTs have become South Africa’s second most popular payment option (after cards) for ecommerce. 

Shuttlers

Nigerian shared mobility startup, Shuttlers, recently closed a $1.6 million seed round. The round was led by VestedWorld, with participation from Interswitch, Launch Africa Ventures,  Rising Tide Africa, EchoVC Partners, Alsa, CMC 21, ShEquity, Consonance, Five35, Sakore, CcHub Syndicate, and Nikky Tarus.

Shuttlers was founded in 2019 by Damilola Olokesusi. It provides safe and affordable transport on designated routes across Lagos. Its value proposition is centred around the Shuttlers app which allows users to load credit, book a ride, and track shuttles.

Trips delivered through Shuttler’s fixed routes services are on average 80% cheaper than other ride-hailing services in Lagos. To date the startup has completed over 5 million trips. The seed round will enable Shuttlers to expand to other major cities in Nigeria.

Mobiz

South African mobile marketing startup, Mobiz, has raised a pre-Series A round of $4 million from HAVAÍC, Futuregrowth, Launch Africa, Allan Gray E-Squared Ventures, CapaciTech and Endeavor’s Harvest Fund.

Founded in 2014 by Greg Chen, Mobiz is a code-free tool that helps marketers to seamlessly create and send SMS campaigns to their customers. These messages range from offers and and loyalty programs to crisis communication and ticket sales.

SMS messages delivered by the company are typically read within 3 minutes and have an average open rate of 98%.

With the newly raised capital, Mobiz are setting their sights further afield. They’re now looking to launch in the US where they plan to take their proposition to SMB’s.

Kippa

Nigerian accounting startup, Kippa, has raised $3.2 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Target Global with participation from Entrée Capital, Alter Global and Rally Cap Ventures. A plethora of angel investors also participated including the CEO of Kuda, Babs Ogundeyi and Edward Suh from Goodwater Capital.

Using the Kippa app, small business owners can keep track of debtors and send automated debt reminders. According to Kippa, merchants are able to recover debts three times faster, which in many cases frees up cash flow to ensure their continued survival. Merchants can also record sales and expenses, create invoices and receipts, manage their inventory, and track the overall financial performance of their business.

Kippa will use the capital to further scale its product, which to date has more than 130K active users from across Nigeria.

Treepz

Nigerian shared mobility startup, Treepz (formerly Plentywaka), has secured a seed round of $2.8 million. Earlier this year they closed an initial tranche of $1.2 million. They’ve now secured a further $1.6 million in funding from Google for Startups Black Founders Fund Africa, Uncovered Fund, Blanford Capital and Jonomi Capital.

Similar to Shuttlers, Treepz offers a digital platform where passengers can book daily rides along fixed routes. However, it also serves as an aggregator for bus companies across 21 cities in Nigeria, allowing transport operators to replace manual servicing and ticketing with digitised solutions.

Shortly after raising the $1.2 million Treepz acquired Ghanian startup Stabus. History is repeating itself with their coffers now topped up. They have recently announced the acquisition of Ugandan bus company, Ugabus.

Where do you hail from?

I’m from Osun State, Nigeria and I’m now based in Lagos.

What was it like growing up there?

I was one of four children. I grew up in a community where each family was looking out for one another. So for example if there was a child that wasn’t in school on a particular day the community would take it upon themselves to make sure that child went to school.

What were you doing before founding Edves?

I studied computer science at Ilorin University. After graduating I did a 3 month internship in Lagos and that was where I learnt how to develop websites. That was really my first foray into the tech industry.

What does Edves do?

Edves digitizes school operations - both private and public. From Kindergarten all the way through to grade 12. We simplify the process of enrolling students and generating billing for parents in private schools.

In a public schools it is focussed on enrolment, attendance tracking and sharing content between teachers and students for a blended learning experience.

Administrators can also use the platform to engage the parents and keep them up-to-date on the progress of their child’s studies.

What’s your team size?

45. This comprises backend and dev op engineers, product designers, sales, marketing, customer success, and the accounts team.

Have you raised funding or bootstrapped?

We were bootstrapped for several years. In 2011 started a company called IT Vessel, which was a startup that developed software for the banking and finance industry. Edves was one of the products in the IT Vessel portfolio.

Once the product started showing early signs of getting traction in the market we joined an accelerator program in Lagos. 12 months later we grew to have over 60 schools on our platform and that point we shut down IT Vessel and incorporated Edves as it’s own company. 

In 2017 we enrolled for several accelerator programs and up placing third in Seedstars. In 2018 we won the global Seedstars prize in Lausanne, Switzerland which came with a $50K grant. This then opened the door to start having discussions with investors and shortly thereafter we secured a $120K pre-seed round in Q3 of 2018. Then in Q3 of this year we closed a seed round of $575K.

What’s your business model?

We have different annual subscription packages which are charged per student. On average we charge $9 per student per annum.

Which countries are you operating in?

Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe. We are looking to expand into at least two more markets before the end of 2021.

What do you think the biggest challenge is that African startups currently face?

Possessing the knowledge on how to get to an MVP (minimum viable product) in the shortest time possible. I have seen a lot of startups raising large rounds but have still failed to figure out their MVP.

Once you solve your MVP you’ll have clarity on the size of the problem that exists and most importantly the amount of money your customers are willing to pay to solve this problem.

What excites most about Africa’s startup ecosystem?

So many products have yet to be built here on the continent and so the market opportunities are massive. In recent years a cadre of startups have been able to prove that African startups can solve African problems and this is resulting in a greater inflow of capital into the continent and a faster growing startup ecosystem. This will be a win-win for all those involved.

Advice to up and coming African entrepreneurs?

Look beyond the fund raising game. Look inwards and try to ascertain whether you are able to serve an identified market with a solution to a known problem. How can you then take such a solution and make it scale.

In the news 🚀

🇿🇦 South African adtech startup, Adbot, has raised $500K from Enygma Ventures to help it grow its customer base.

🇳🇬 Wicrypt, a Nigerian blockchain-based wifi sharing startup, has closed a $1.5 million funding round to help it expand into new countries.

🇪🇬 Egyptian home furniture e-commerce startup, Efreshli, has closed a seed round of $500K to help it double down on growth.

🇿🇦 Find out the SASSA payment dates.

Now all of sudden there was an on-demand solution that offered scalability, speed and security when it came to managing these colossal datasets.

With the rise of big data within organisations came a new challenge - finding the right talent to make sense of all of this data. Collate, structure, analyse and make informed decisions from these terabytes and petabytes of data.

The initial dearth of data scientists quickly changed as the demand for such talent continued to grow year-on-year with salaries rising commensurately.

The seminal moment came in 2012 when the Harvard Business Review hailed data science as ‘the sexiest job of the 21st century’.

Since then the remit of data science has expanded to encompass everything from AI and machine learning to business analysis and web analytics. On the African continent data science is on a similar upward trajectory.

Zindi Africa are looking to transform the continent by showcasing African data science talent to the world.

They host the largest community of African data scientists, working to solve the world’s most pressing challenges using machine learning and AI.

They connect these data scientists with organisations looking to make sense of their data on a project basis. Beyond this placement service, they provide a place to learn, hone your data science skills and find a job.

This week we sat down with Zindi’s co-founder and CEO, Celina Lee, to learn more about the platform. You can listen to the podcast interview below.

African Tech Story

Zindi Africa Podcast Interview

Listen now (12 min) | The full interview with Celina Lee, CEO of Zindi Africa…

Read more

5 years ago · 1 like · Marc Bromhall

Car leasing in Nigeria

As urbanisation in Nigeria’s big cities continues unabated, ride-hailing and ride-sharing has helped quell the congestion on the roads.

The rise of these services has resulted in a spike in vehicle leasing as most taxi and Danfo drivers (privately run yellow and white mini buses that serve as unofficial public transport in Nigerian cities) can’t afford to own their vehicles.

The leasing to date has been an informal operation prone to fraudulent activities. These include drivers defaulting on their monthly lease payments and car owners leasing out unroadworthy vehicles.

MyGarage is tackling these challenges by digitising the entire value chain in the industry, from the way owners and verified drivers connect, to how the vehicles are maintained and rental fees are collected.

A telemetry device is leased to car owners, and installed by partner tracking companies. This is fixed in the cars to generate data on the maintenance and roadworthiness of the vehicles while in use.

Periodically, owners get an automated report on the inspections from support partners via a mobile app.

Moroever, MyGarage has a payment gateway that guarantees rental fees. The system sends the driver an alert a few days before their next rental payment is due.

If a driver defaults on the payment, the telemetry device disables the car engine and prompts the owner. As soon as the outstanding payment is made, the engine is restored.

MyGarage makes their money by charging a platform fee every time a car owner gets paid.

In the News 🚀

🇿🇦 South African online health marketplace startup RecoMed has raised a $1.5M round led by Vunani Fintech Fund.

🇰🇪 Kenyan B2B ecommerce platform, Twiga, has raised a $50m Series C round to expand across Africa.

🇳🇬 YC-backed Nigerian fintech, Lemonade Finance, has raised $725K in a pre-seed funding round.

🇰🇪 Kenya-based electric mobility startup, Opibus, has raised $7.5 million in equity and grant funding to help it scale its manufacturing operations.

🇿🇦 South African dental services website, Dentist Hub, launched across the country. They plan to expand across the sub region in the coming months.

Would the land they purchase perhaps be expropriated by a new regime? Without efficient land registry and title deeds in some markets it can end up being a “your word vs theirs scenario”. Not great when people’s life savings are on the line.

SESO Global is looking to change all of this by offering a unique one-stop-shop for digital real estate transactions.

Through their unique ecosystem of services, they offer buyers access to trusted properties and professional service providers. This allows for a secure end-to-end property purchasing experience along the entire real-estate value chain.

This week we caught up with their founder and CEO, Daniel Bloch to learn more. You can listen to the podcast interview below.

African Tech Story

SESO Global Podcast Interview

Listen now (18 min) | The full interview with Daniel Bloch, CEO of SESO Global…

Read more

5 years ago · Marc Bromhall

Uber testing ride sharing in Africa

Uber has started testing Pool Chance in Kenya. It’s a feature that lets riders going in the same direction share the cost of the journey. If all goes well it plans to launch in Ghana and Nigeria imminently.

Pool Chance is very similar to UberPool which launched for the first time back in 2014 in San Francisco. The popular low-cost taxi service was phased out due to Covid-19, but now is slowly starting to reemerge in the markets it was launched. Uber are at the same time introducing it where it was unavailable before.

In the news 🚀

🇪🇬 Egyptian e-commerce startup Talabeyah raises $1.1m funding round from a group of Angel investors to bolster early-stage growth.

🇳🇬 Sparkle, a Nigeria digital bank, has raised a US$3.1 million seed funding round to help it invest in infrastructure and scale across the diaspora.

🇳🇬 Nigerian retail-tech startup Alerzo has acquired fintech company Shago Payments as it looks to add another string to its bow in the payments category.

🇳🇬 Sendbox, a Nigerian e-commerce fulfilment startup, has raised a $1.8 million seed funding round to expand it’s operations across West Africa.

🇿🇦 South African storage company, StorageBuddy, launched its digital self storage service across South Africa.

🇿🇦 Looking to get your SASSA application reconsidered.

The company, in a statement, described the integration as “the fastest, secure way for Nigerian businesses to accept international payments.”

Apple Pay, which is Apple’s digital wallet service, provides users with a secure and private way to pay on their iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches and Macbooks.

Despite having a presence in almost every continent since 2014, Apple Pay has been slow to launch in Africa. It made its first foray onto the continent via South Africa in March this year, but only via a select group of banks - Absa, Nedbank and Discovery Bank. Since then Apple made no mention of where it would look to launch next.

Instead of waiting around, Paystack took the initiative. They are the first payment gateway in Nigeria to support Apple Pay. This gives Nigerian businesses access to millions of Apple Pay users in the more than 60 countries where the payments service is active. One more step in connecting Africa to the world.

Smart cities innovation programme

31 African tech startups have been selected to take part in the Smart Cities Innovation Programme. Startups will receive mentorship, training, and will enter the Smart City ecosystem, with the overall goal being African urban transformation in line with the Sustainable Development Goals set out by the UN.

The 6 month programme is a collaboration between the Rwandan Ministry of ICT and Innovation and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), or for those who don’t speak German, The German Development Agency. It’s currently focussed on three key areas, namely, Fintech, Mobility, and Cleantech & Smart Housing.

Some of the startups in the programme include, Cofundie (who we covered recently in our “Proptech on the rise” article), Mazi Mobility, Instadriver, Basigo, Koolboks and Dove Air.

In the news 🚀

🇹🇳 Tunisian data management and analysis startup, Biware, has raised a $1.2 million seed funding round to help it grow its team and launch new branches.

🇳🇬 Nigerian crypto startup, Bitmama, has closed a $350K pre-seed funding round to help it expand into new markets.

🇳🇬 Nigerian B2B payments platform, Verto, has raised a $10 million Series A round to boost its geographical expansion.

Needless to say, investment at both country and sector level is still fairly concentrated. But that is changing. Our recent article titled, “Best of the rest” looks at how Ghana is fast emerging as a contender to the current big 4 startup powerhouses of Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Egypt. The same applies at a sector level.

In our recent interview with VC, Zach George, he opined that in order for Africa to flourish as a startup ecosystem, fintech needed to be the precursor to the emergence of other startup sectors.

“Africa needed to have a strong and stable financial and regulatory environment for people and businesses to pay and get paid. Once that was sorted, then you could look at creating companies that solve problems in other sectors.”

Proptech is one of these emerging sectors. There are currently over 200 proptech startups across the continent with the growth on an upward trajectory. On Thursday 23rd September SESO Global and Proptech Africa hosted the first African Proptech Pitch Series.

Kweku Essien, partner at Mansa Capital, played host to the event which ran over Zoom. There were three startups pitching their ideas to an esteemed panel of investors which included Zachary Aarons from Metaprop, Satoshi Shinada from Kepple Africa Ventures and Ibrahim Sagna, Global Head at the African Export-Import Bank.

Chukwuemeka Ndukwe, kicked proceedings off with a high tempo pitch for his startup, Cofundie. Coming out of Ghana, the company identifies high-quality and institutional-grade real estate projects for retail investors. Cofundie earns revenue by taking a percentage of profits from the sale of a home or from the rental income generated.

Next up was Zak Omarjee out of South Africa with startup Crowdprop. It’s South Africa’s first regulated property crowdfunding platform. Another compelling offering to retail investors who can now own a piece of a real estate investment portfolio. They offer properties in both South Africa and the UK and the investment lockup period is 3-5 years.

Last up was Josemaria Agulanna from myyinvest, a fractional real-estate investing platform out of Nigeria. For at little as $10 you can own a fraction of a commercial or residential property with returns purported to be as high as 50%. The investment lock up period varies depending on the type of investment.

The startups had only 5 minutes each to deliver their pitch and all three co-founders did a great job at conveying both the customer and investor value propositions. After each pitch there was a 5 minute Q&A where the investors could get further clarity on the respective business offerings.

Like many pitch contests no investments were made in the session, but rather it was a great way to bring a greater degree of awareness to the African proptech ecosystem along with increasing the networking opportunities. Onwards and upwards for African proptech 🙌

In the news

🇿🇦 South African agritech startup HelloChoice has secured investment from Standard Bank in exchange for 25% equity. The investment will allow the startup to continue to grow its agricultural produce marketplace on both the supply and demand side.

🇿🇦 South African chiropractic website, Chiropractor Hub, launched across the country. They help locate the best chiropractor in your area.

🇸🇳 Senegalese delivery startup, Yobante Express, an online marketplace that connects local couriers with local commerce has raised a $1.2 million bridge funding round.

🇲🇦 Moroccan healthtech startup, DataPathology, has raised $220K to help it transform the pathological diagnosis system and augment services provided to both practitioners and patients.

🇳🇬 Nigerian startup, Infibranches Technologies, which helps solar energy providers manage their operations and receive payments, has banked $2 million funding from All On, an impact investment company backed by oil company, Shell.

You’re originally from India, completed your Masters at Stanford and then went to work on Wall Street for a number of years. How did you end up in Cape Town as a VC?

I came to South Africa during the football World Cup in 2010 for a 6 week holiday. I had heard murmurings of an emerging tech scene in Cape Town similar to that of the Bay area. A lot of friends of mine when I lived in New York City had mentioned that there is this incredible city called Cape Town where a number of the World Cup games are taking place and that I should check it out.

It’s got the rumblings of Silicon Valley, but at a nascent stage. At the time I was working as an investment banker, and was looking to make a move into the startup world.

So I came down here and enjoyed the World Cup games but at the same time I saw some of the similarities between Cape Town and Silicon Valley, and fell in love with the place.

So in a moment of spontaneity I decided to make Cape Town home. However I didn't start off as a VC. I said instead of raising a fund you need to pave the road before you can start driving down it. So my initial years in Cape Town were spent building the startup ecosystem.

How did Launch Africa Ventures come about?

Launch Africa Ventures is just an extension of the work I was doing at the accelerator, Startupbootcamp, with my co-founder Phillip. We launched the fund in June 2020. We build on the good work that accelerators as like Startupbootcamp Y-Combinator, Techstars and Flat6labs have done for founders.

When these founders need their first institutional cheque outside of just friends, family and Angels, instead of having to wait for a Series A round which typically only happens when you're doing north of $100K in monthly revenue you now have institutions that can come on a lot earlier and be part of seed rounds.

If the only reason why a startup fails is due to the lack of funding, that's a pity. If a startup fails because they cannot find product-market fit that's understandable. But if they get traction in the market and simply fail to do lack of capital, that a real shame, and that’s what we want to avoid happening on the continent. That’s why Launch Africa Ventures exists.

What’s your investment criteria?

To date we’ve backed 56 companies but we’re very selective in who we back. We have a strong preference for companies who have emerged from world-class accelerators. We are both sector and product agnostic but we have an affinity for companies that have a B2B or B2B2C business model where there is proof that you can deliver a quality service to a bank, telco, retailer or insurer.

We look at companies that are beyond the ideation/MVP stage, ideally doing at least $20K monthly revenue. Finally we strongly favour companies that plan to expand beyond their home markets within 12 months of us investing.

What’s your investment strategy?

Because we invest very early we aren’t limited by startups having a defined path to exit, be it going public in the capital markets or being acquired. Exit horizons for startups range from 5-10 years. Our fund is a 7 year fund, so our exit strategy is selling selective stakes in our portfolio companies, either fully or partially when they raise subsequent rounds of funding.

What’s the role of the VC in the startup ecosystem?

It's important for VC’s to add strategic value outside of their investment. For every dollar you put into a company, how many dollars are you adding in value? That means access to other investors in a round and access to future investors in follow on rounds. 

It also ties into recruitment and expansion. How can you help a startup with talent acquisition. How do you help founders expand into new geographies? How do you help founders with corporate partnerships? There is a lot of non-financial value that VC’s should be adding to startups. However, I don’t think too many VC’s in Africa do that.

If we look at the 5 unicorns that have come out of Africa to date, 4 of them are fintechs. Why do you think fintech companies are so far ahead of other startups on the continent when it comes to revenue and valuations?

Yes, fintech tends to get a lot of the attention because a lot of the most valuable companies in Africa today are payment companies that started in 2014-2016 and 5 years later have reached terminal velocity. It’s the natural law of progression.

Africa needed to have a strong and stable financial and regulatory environment for people and businesses to pay and get paid. Once that was sorted, then you could look at creating companies that solve problems in other sectors. 

The majority of startups coming out of these world-class accelerators tend to be incorporated abroad - either in the US, Europe and more recently Singapore. Is international incorporation an important factor for you when making an investment in a startup? If so, why?

Yes. If you’re incorporated in Nigeria or Kenya for example it’s very difficult for you to scale to other countries if your holding company is in one particular African country.

You have to think about future rounds of funding - international investors will be more partial to investing their money in a startup incorporated in the US or the UK  where there is less currency risk, geo-political risk, IP risk, and repatriation of funds risk. Almost all of our 56 portfolio companies are incorporated off-shore.

You can listen to the full interview with Zach here.

In the news 🚀

🇳🇬 Nigerian e-commerce startup, OurPass ,has announced a $1 million pre-seed round as it launches its mobile app that provides a seamless and secure way to shop online. 

🇪🇬 Kashat, a fintech startup from Egpyt has raised a $1.75 million bridge funding round to grow its platform further.

🇪🇬 Egyptian B2B e-commerce startup, Capiter, has raised a $33 million Series A funding round to drive rapid expansion into financial services and additional markets.

Wave, a Senegalese mobile money provider, has recently become Francophone Africa’s first unicorn (valued at more than $1 billion) and the fifth unicorn across the entire continent. The other four being Interswitch, Fawry, Flutterwave, and Jumia. All of these are fintech’s apart from Jumia which is an e-commerce player.

Wave managed to secure a $200 million Series A from Founders Fund, Sequoia Heritage (a subsidiary of Sequoia), Stripe, and Ribbit Capital at a valuation of $1.7 billion. Smaller participants in the round included Partech Africa and Sam Altman, former CEO of Y Combinator.

Wave is looking to disrupt an industry category which has long been dominated by telco-owned incumbents. The most notable being M-Pesa which was launched in 2007 by Vodafone and Kenyan mobile operator, Safaricom. Owning the mobile networks gave these companies a moat which thwarted any attempts from new upstarts to gain market share. This hegemony however has resulted in innovation stagnation.

With the mobile money market in sub-Saharan Africa growing exponentially year-on-year and with Africa’s unbanked majority, the addressable market opportunity is colossal. According to the IMF, only 43% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa are “banked” by way of a traditional bank or mobile money account. It’s no wonder all the big names came to the funding party on this one.

Wave is planning to improve the mobile money user experience by offering free deposits and withdrawals and only charging 1% when you send money - 70% less than what it currently costs according to their founder Drew Durbin.

They’re also working on Mobile Money 2.0 which is app-based rather than being built on USSD - essentially the communication protocol for sending text messages. For users without a smartphone, Wave provides a free QR-card to transact with an agent.

With a full-stack tech infrastructure - agent and consumer applications, an agent network, QR cards, business collections and disbursements - Wave has been able to accelerate its traction now boasting several million monthly active users and billions of dollars in annual transactions.

With this additional $200 million in its coffers Wave plans to grow out its 800 strong team across sales, product and engineering and also deepen it roots in Senegal and the Ivory Coast, its two main markets. From there it will look to expand to regulatory-friendly markets across the continent and eventually take on the likes of M-Pesa.

In the news 🚀

🇳🇬 Nigerian spices exporter Agricorp has raised a $17.5m Series A funding round to help it increase its production capacity to 7,000 metric tonnes.

🇪🇬 Egyptian e-commerce startup, FwRun, has been acquired by Saudi Arabian last mile delivery and logistics firm Diggipacks.

🇺🇬 Ugandan e-logistics startup Ridelink has raised a $150K pre-seed round to enable further expansion in the region.

🇰🇪 Kenyan fintech startup Pezesha, has closed a seven-figure seed extension round as it looks to expand into new markets.

As these are the people that go on to evangelise your brand to their friends and family network and enable you to scale faster. All the big players in startup land understand the value of effective PR early on. Airbnb, Uber, Netflix. They all did it.

The trouble these days is that startup PR has become rather elitist. Leading tech publications like Techcrunch only tend to cover startup funding rounds, and large ones at that. You can see the last 3 Africa-focussed stories on Techcrunch were all related to funding with the minimum round being $9 million.

Far larger than the average funding round on the continent which in 2020 was around $1.7 million. It’s almost impossible to get your startup a mention on Techcrunch without having closed a mega round from Sandhill Road’s finest.

And people are starting to call it out. Last month, startup stalwart and founder of Microacquire, Andrew Gazdecki made the following tongue-in-cheek tweet.

He followed up with a few more tweets like this one:

And this one:

TechCrunch didn't respond and rather than continuing to share what the entire startup community is thinking Andrew took action and actually did something about it. He launched his own publication called Bootstrappers.

Bootstrapped startups are undoubtedly an under-represented startup category in today’s media. They most certainly deserve a larger share-of-voice. These are self-funded companies which have to turn a profit from very early on if they are to survive - a stark contrast to some modern tech unicorns who have raised hundreds of millions of dollars but are yet to be profitable.

Thankfully, on the African continent we still have tech publisher sites like Disrupt Africa and Techpoint Africa which cover startups of all sizes, both bootstrapped and funded. Long may this continue, otherwise Africa may have to launch its own version of Bootstrappers in years to come.

In the news 🚀

🇲🇦 Moroccan B2B e-commerce app, Chari.ma, has closed a round of funding and announced the acquisition of mobile credit book application Karny.ma.

🇳🇬 Nigerian B2B marketplace startup, Sabi, has secured a seed funding round as it surpasses the milestone of over 150K SMB’s on its platform. 

🇸🇳 Ride-hailing service Kai Senegal has secured seed funding from Mobility 54, the corporate venture capital arm of Toyota Tsusho Corporation, to help it scale.

🇷🇼 Rwandan medtech startup, Viebeg, has raised a pre-seed round funding to help it expand across the continent.

🇿🇦 Hollywoodbets mobi site surpasses desktop traffic for the first time.

With this is mind, Ghana is actually punching well above its weight as a tech ecosystem. From 2019 to 2020 the number of funded startups in Ghana rose by 25% to 15 in total. This year so far, a total of 8 Ghanaian startups have raised funding, putting it on a trajectory for continued year-on-year funding growth.

For decades the country has been an exemplar for democracy, free speech and the rule of law in West Africa. This unbridled commitment to libertarian values is slowly starting to win plaudits outside of the continent. In April this year, Jack Dorsey announced that Twitter would make Ghana its African headquarters.

As to why Ghana was chosen as the company’s African headquarters, Twitter explained that the country was a firm supporter of free speech, online freedom, and the Open Internet. Moreover, Ghana’s recent appointment to host The Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area allows Twitter to “establish a presence in the region”.

Due to Covid-19, Twitter is holding off on renting any office space in Accra, Ghana’s capital, and for now the entire team in Ghana is working from home. They’re currently hiring for 4 positions across Product, Sales and Customer Support.

Startup rankings

StartupBlink have recently published their Best Cities for Startups and Best Countries for Startups reports’ for 2021. Lagos is the best ranked African city, coming in 122nd position globally. Nairobi placed 136th and Cape Town in at 145th.

The top position went to San Francisco, with New York in 2nd. Surprisingly, Beijing took 3rd position, with Los Angeles and London in 4th and 5th positions respectively.

At a country level, South Africa ranks as the best country for startups in Africa, coming in at 48th position globally. Kenya ranked in 61st position, Nigeria in 63rd position, and Rwanda managed to secure 69th, one place ahead of Egypt.

StartupBlink is a world-renowned startup map and research centre providing public sector ecosystem developers, innovative organisations, and researchers with the knowledge and tools to map, brand, and grow their startup ecosystems.

In the news 🚀

🇳🇬 Nigerian social platform for gifting Showlove has closed a $300K pre-seed funding round as it prepares to launch first version of its product.

🇿🇦 South African hardware backer Savant has made 5 investments worth a total of $1.2 million over the last 12 months.

🇳🇬 Nigerian competitive e-sports startup Gamr has secured an undisclosed seed investment to scale its operations to Africa’s estimated 750 million gamers. 

Having recently raised a $23 million series A, they’re looking to democratise vehicle ownership by employing a revenue-based financing model with a cohort they’re calling “mobility entrepreneurs”- essentially anyone who uses a vehicle to earn their income.

The choice to serve this defined subset of customers is both altruistic and self serving. According to their co-founder Ladi Delano, he wants the company to solve some of the unemployment problems facing the continent within the transport industry. Moreover, instead of providing the service to the entire market who cannot guarantee a payback, why not target drivers who through their work can guarantee a payback.

With such a compelling offering, and some really nice cars to boot, Moove has been appointed Uber’s exclusive car financing and vehicle supply partner in sub-Saharan Africa. 

It provides loans to these drivers by selling them new vehicles and financing up to 95% of the purchase price within 5 days of sign up. They can choose to pay back their loans over 24, 36 or 48 months, using a percentage of the weekly revenue generated while driving for Uber.

With most banks asking for at least a 10-15% down payment on a vehicle, Moove’s meagre 5% is a game changer. The net effective annual interest rate is also much better for the borrower. It’s no wonder Moove now operates in 5 cities across the continent and to date is responsible for over 850K completed taxi trips.

Representing at Y Combinator

In July we first wrote about the 9 African startup participants at the Y Combinator summer cohort of 2021. Since then another 3 have been added.

Out of Nigeria there is Payhippo, which offers loans to small businesses in Africa in under 3 hours and Infiuss Health, which connects EU and US-based pharmaceutical life science companies to participants for clinical trials in Africa.

Out of Ghana there is Yemaachi Biotechnology which is working to lower the financial costs of cancer by developing novel, non-invasive and affordable molecular diagnostics.

Digitising the wholesale-retail relationship

Omnibiz, a Lagos-based startup, recently raised a $3 million round to continue its market expansion. They’re a B2B e-commerce platform that connects fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG’s) manufacturers to retailers by digitising the supply chain that connects them.

Africa’s B2C retail landscape is well covered with players like Jumia, Konga, and Takealot all commanding growing customer networks. However it is the B2B landscape that is ripe for digital disruption. With over 90% of sales in Africa’s major economies deriving from informal channels the market opportunity is colossal.

Omnibiz offers retailers a mobile app, WhatsApp channel and a phone number that they can use to stock their shops. It operates an asset-light retail distribution model enabling key stakeholders in the supply chain to focus on what they do best.

For example, distributors can focus solely on warehousing and leave the transport element to one of Omnibiz’s third-party logistics providers. The platform enables a harmonious marketplace operation that keeps costs down whilst optimising for efficiencies.

In the news 🚀

🇳🇬 Nigerian logistics startup MVX has closed a seed funding round of $1.3 million to grow its product offering for the African trade and logistics sector. 

🇪🇬 Teegara, an e-commerce startup based in Cairo has closed a five-figure pre-seed follow-on investment round to enable it to continue on its growth trajectory.

🇳🇬 Nigerian agritech startup Zowasel has secured $100K in financing from Guinness Nigeria and Promasidor Nigeria.

🇳🇬 Chekkit, who’s founder we interviewed two weeks ago, has raised a $500K pre-seed funding round to enable it to further expand its operations within the pharmaceutical and FMCG industries.

Founded by Ryosuke Yamawaki and Takahiro Kanzaki in December 2018, the company has offices in Nairobi and Lagos and specialises in seed investments of between $50,000 and $150,000 in early-stage tech startups on the continent.

These 22 new investments so far this year take Kepple’s total portfolio size to 92 companies across 11 markets. Some of their most recent investments include Omnisient out of South Africa, Termii out of Nigeria and MoneyHash out of Egypt.

Fintech soaring

At a global level fintech is having a watershed moment. In the second quarter of this year it attracted $34 billion in venture capital funding. Put another way, 1 in every 5 dollars invested by VC’s has gone into fintech.

It’s no surprise that Nigeria’s first mobile-only bank, Kuda, recently secured a Series B round amounting to $55 million at a $500 million valuation. But when it comes to Nigerian fintech funding they’re merely playing catchup.

Besides Paystack’s $200 million sale to Stripe last year, Flutterwave raised over $200 million through its Series B and C rounds over the course of 2020 making it only the 4th unicorn on the African continent ($1 billion valuation).

Compared to other global fintech’s these valuations seem rather insignificant. Swedish “buy now, pay later” startup Klarna is valued at $46 billion. British neobank Revolut is valued at $33 billion and Brazilian Nubank is now worth $30 billion.

However, the one distinct advantage African fintech has over the rest of the world is its addressable market. Of the 2 billion unbanked people across the world 60% of those can be found in Africa.

Nigeria’s first electric vehicle

Yes, in spite of Nigeria’s volatile power supply and inferior roads, JET Motor Company has launched Nigeria’s first electric vehicle. Some might say that this is merely a clever PR move, but the company is intent on building the next “Tesla of Africa” according to its Sales and Marketing Director, Rupani Sanjay.

Following over three years of research, testing, and iterative development, the company has finally achieved its primary goal of bringing an electric vehicle to the African market.

According to Ebuka Uchendu, Technical Lead of the JET EV, the vehicle can travel 260-280km on a full charge. With the EV, he says, the number of engine parts reduces by almost 70%, thereby cutting maintenance costs. Operational costs also drop significantly with refuelling no longer being a requirement.

In the news 🚀

🇳🇬 Nigerian fintech startup Piggyvest, which helps its customers save and invest money, has acquired counterpart Savi.ng as it looks to grow its customer base further.

🇪🇬 Egyptian fintech startup CreditFins has secured an undisclosed pre-seed funding round.

🇪🇬 Egyptian gaming marketplace GamesBandy has received a $40,000 grant from Taqadam, a MENA startup accelerator to help continue its expansion across the region.

What challenge does Chekkit solve?

Chekkit was invented to solve the menace and deaths that counterfeit medications and consumables cause our continent and other developing nations across the world. 

In addition, we have also been solving other related challenges like consumer data acquisition, bridging the gap between producers and consumers, as well as helping to make daunting pharmaceutical supply chains transparent.

What‘s the story behind the company?

After founding the business in 2018, I needed really smart guys to help build the amazing company I had dreamt of building - so I brought in Tosin Adelowo and Samuel Uhkueleigbe to make this happen.

The company started after I’d experienced what falsified drugs can do to us. A friend witnessed a patient die in a clinic she was working at in Ghana, because they had a ruptured kidney resulting from taking counterfeit antimalarial medicine. 

I felt terrified and saw a key purpose for my innovative abilities. My team and I researched the market briefly in Accra and quickly discovered that consumers are not concerned with the presence of counterfeits nor the danger posed. Until the effects of the active ingredients in the falsified medicines builds up in the system it can go undetected. 

We then decided to develop an authentication system powered by sticker labels that verifies medicines using encrypted codes over a USSD dial and QR scan. We aggregate and process surveys through consumers who answer questions during the authentication process and in exchange receive a reward. 

Today, in Nigeria we give 100 Naira airtime to consumers after they verify 5 products with Chekkit labels and answer the survey questions.

What were you doing before founding the company?

I was in a software entrepreneurship training program in Ghana, called MEST. I worked on several projects that year before deciding to stick with Chekkit.

However, before the program I had started two software businesses. The first was in my sophomore year at the University of Ibadan where I developed a co-learning social network with a friend in which thousands of students signed up.

I then developed a social music streaming messenger which attracted offers from three major global record labels to sign track streaming licenses but ended up failing due to cash burnout.

How did you get Chekkit off the ground?

Chekkit launched via the MEST incubator in late 2018 when I moved back to Lagos, Nigeria. We closed our first deal later that year around 3 months after launch with founder capital. 

We started fundraising afterwards from the Facebook Accelerator in Lagos, as well as via Merck Global Accelerator and Google for Startup Accelerator.

From product authentication and real-time consumer insights, we began to provide complementary services such as on-package codes for online and offline consumer engagements and consumer retargeting services (by sending personalized periodic messages to target consumer groups).

How much money have you raised so far?

$120K in grants and $500K in pre-seed capital.

What went into building the early stage product?

Fortunately, I had taught myself basic skills in coding with Javascript, User Experience design thinking and User Interface design so it was fairly easy for me to bring an MVP to market.

I designed the rough platform architecture for mobile, USSD and platform flows as well as the User Interface of the first iteration of our consumer intelligence platform. I then took a clickable version to a client and closed our first deal thereafter.

I hired our first full-stack engineer who built the product into further iterations. We also crafted the solution in-line with existing policies and required regulatory standards.

What’s your tech stack?

Angular, React, Javascript, Nodejs and Mysql. We also leverage Blockchain, Machine Learning and other specific integrations.

Where do you currently operate?

We currently operate in Nigeria and Afghanistan. We will be expanding along west and east Africa to countries like Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Uganda.

We are also expanding our service to cover real-time RFID/NFC tracking with sensors for cold-chain traceability.

What’s the existing startup landscape like in Nigeria?

The Nigerian startup landscape is predominantly characterized by fintech, healthtech, logistics and supply chain management businesses.

Over the past decade the region has experienced a mega shift in the amount of investments available to help startups grow and these investments have began to pay off with several major exits.

However, this is only the beginning as the growth margin here is much higher than its contemporary ecosystems in Europe or the USA. These developed markets are saturated in comparison to African markets where there is still plenty of room for smartphone and internet penetration to grow into the future.

A lot of technological infrastructure would need to be developed to improve basic processes within the region which would directly affect GDP growth and per capita economic growth, and the creation of job opportunities for the young generation which make up the largest segment of Nigerian society.

What’s your business model?

We combine an annual software license fee with a pay-as-you-go model per sticker label or consumer group reached.

We actively help our partners to increase consumer engagement rates and advise on best practices to gain more product insights across their supply chain.

Producers/Brands pay these fees to leverage our services and Chekkit liaises directly with the marketing team and/or supply chain team as needed.

Chekkit is positioned as a complementary ERP solution, tracking activities from warehouse to final consumer as well as collecting information on the farm supply end. 

Chekkit was recently selected as one of 15 companies to join Google’s Startup Accelerator for Africa. Can you tell us more about the application process?

Well, we had applied twice for the GFSA previously before finally getting selected this time. Third time lucky!

From application to interview and getting selected took less than a month. This time we had greater clarity on our value proposition which was a Machine Learning solution we are developing - we will be enabling camera phones to easily recognise counterfeit product packaging by taking pictures.

What company do you look to for inspiration and why?

Chronicled because of their persuasive use of blockchain technology and hardware components. Also, their foresight for a supply chain ledger. In the formative days of Chekkit we learnt a lot from their business model but made ours more original for our target market - Africa and the Middle East.

What are your views on the African tech ecosystem?

It’s growing steadily to what the US tech ecosystem was about two decades ago. Because there is constant exchange of information between both markets and even the Asian tech ecosystem, Africa’s tech ecosystem will see exponential growth in a very short time. 

Three years ago startups in Africa would typically raise around $1 million in seed funding. Today it’s quite common to raise $5-10m in seed capital as there are now more investors and more exits in the ecosystem in just 3 years.

In the news 🚀

🇿🇦 South African fintech juggernaut Yoco has secured $83 million in Series C funding to scale its financial ecosystem for small businesses.

🇨🇮 Ivorian fintech Julaya raises $2m to digitise business payments in West Africa.

💰 There is a new VC in town. Nigerian angel investor Olumide Soyombo has upped the ante and launched his own VC firm, Voltron Capital.

🇪🇬 Egyptian online household shopping service GoodsMart has raised $3.6 million to accelerate market expansion.

What challenge does Emergency Response Africa solve?

We make it possible for Africans with a medical emergency to get help at the scene within minutes and transportation to the right hospital for further care.

Through our network of First Responders, ambulances and hospitals enabled by our intelligent dispatch and communication platform, we save lives.

What‘s the story behind the company?

Sometime in 2017, my 18 month old son woke up screaming in the middle of the night. He was clearly in pain but I couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

Luckily, we were living in Canada so I called 911, and in 10 minutes two paramedics were in our home treating him. Thankfully, it turned out to be a minor issue and we didn’t need to ride in the ambulance or go to hospital. He was back in his crib fast asleep in less than 30 minutes. The service blew my mind.

I knew about calling 911 from movies but seeing it live was awe-inspiring and it made me reflect on the fact that in Nigeria, and 91% of Africa, people have no one to call when an emergency occurs. Everyone has a story of someone they know who has died from not getting help in time.

I had a Masters degree in public health and I was just starting another Masters in Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology at Canada’s top innovation university, University of Waterloo.

Naturally, I started asking whether there was a better way to provide emergency medical services enabled by technology.

My co-founder and ERA’s CTO, Maame Poku met during the program, and she shared her story of losing her grandmother in an emergency in Ghana.

Before long, we figured out a model that could significantly reduce response times from over an hour to as low as 10 minutes and also reduce the cost of care. 

What were you doing before founding the company?

I had worked for about 10 years in a variety of roles and industries. I had experience in healthcare, marketing communications, and management consulting in Nigeria, the US, and most recently Canada.

How did you get the company off the ground?

We had a lot of support from University of Waterloo’s Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business.

We also participated in a number of global accelerator programs such as the Accelerator Centre in Waterloo (Canada’s #1 Private Business Accelerator), the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund’s Lagos Innovates program, Rising Tide Africa Mentorship program, JICA NINJA Accelerator by Ventures Platform, and most recently, Google for Startups Africa Accelerator.

How much have you raised so far?

We have raised about $150K through a mix of angel investment and grants.

What went into building the early stage product?

The earliest version of our platform was a mobile application to allow first responders to receive details about an emergency case, and a simple web application for dispatching.

Our CTO pulled this together with the support of a few student interns. It did the job of getting us through an initial pilot, but we learned quickly that there was a lot more needed to bring true efficiency to emergency response.

What’s your tech stack?

We leverage several AWS and Google products.

Where do you currently operate?

We currently run a full operation in Lagos, Nigeria, with First Responders represented in 15 other states. We’ll be expanding operations in these states over the next 18 months.

What’s the existing startup landscape like in Nigeria?

Exciting and challenging. There are a lot of great founders and companies solving important problems despite the many socioeconomic challenges.

In the health tech sector in particular, we’re seeing a lot of opportunities for collaboration between players and we’re positioning ourselves to leverage that.

What’s your business model?

For individuals and families, we have an annual subscription plan and also charge a fee for first responder treatment at the scene of the emergency and ambulance transportation. For corporate organisations and groups, we have an annual retainer fee that assures them of a timely response.

What metric do you use to measure success?

Because we are in the business of saving lives, our response times are a key metric. In an environment where ambulances can take 1hour+ to arrive, we are working hard to bring that down to 10 minutes. Currently we typically respond between 10 and 35 minutes.

Can you tell us a little more about getting into Google’s Startup Accelerator for Africa?

The process took a couple of months I believe. We submitted an online application detailing our business and a proposed technical project we wanted to work on with Google’s support.

We were then invited to complete phase 2 of the application which asked for even more details about our technology and business model. The final step involved an interview with a Googler and then a welcome message. It is definitely an honour to be selected. 

Companies you admire?

There are several. To keep it concise, United Hatzalah of Israel is one of our favourite organisations. I like to say that they have taken lifesaving and made it an art form, responding in as little as 90 seconds!

My co-founder and I travelled to Israel in 2019 to study them and they have been a great support and source of advice and inspiration on this journey.

Most important lesson you’ve learnt so far?

That there will be many moments where the future is completely unclear, but as the (paraphrased) saying goes, ‘just take the next step, and the rest of the staircase will begin to appear’.

Views on the African tech ecosystem?

It’s exciting. Since many African countries face similar challenges, there really is a continental opportunity for almost every startup.

The real market opportunity may lie outside the borders of your launch country. My hope is that more local and global investors recognise the opportunity and put their resources behind it. 

In the news 🚀

🇿🇦 South African fintech startup Akiba Digital has raised over $1.1 million in pre-seed funding to help it increase its market share.

🇳🇬 Nigerian investment platform Chaka has raised a $1.5 million as it becomes the first company in the country to secure an SEC licence.

🇪🇬 Egyptian digital healthcare platform Vezeeta has rolled out a B2B SaaS solution to enhance the patient healthcare experience.

🇰🇪 Kenyan influencer marketing platform, AIfluence has closed $1M seed round led by Dubai-based EQ2 Ventures.

Privacy-enhancing technologies - this is Facebook ostensibly saying that they’re going to minimise the amount of personal data they process whilst maintaining efficacy for their advertisers.

Product and business discovery - improving their algorithms so that users can find more relevant and interesting products and services. Business tools beyond marketing - focussed on CRM, unified messaging across all Facebook apps and hiring via Facebook jobs.

It’s the fourth one which will most profoundly affect businesses in Africa, and that is commerce. Facebook is going all in on augmenting its commerce offering. Integrating its Shops product with the incredibly popular Marketplace.

Enabling AR (Augmented Reality) within the online shopping environment so that users can virtually try on items before they buy. Offering comprehensive payment solutions so users never have to leave the walled garden to make a purchase. This is all with a mobile-first viewpoint.

Africa skipped out desktop and jumped straight to mobile. With mobile penetration across Sub-Saharan Africa currently sitting at only 45%, the future growth of this space is gargantuan compared with that of North America and Europe.

According to the GSMA, Sub-Saharan Africa will have more than 130 million new mobile subscribers by 2025, half of which will come from just 5 markets: Nigeria, Ethiopia, DRC, Tanzania and Kenya. At the same time Africa’s unbanked will open bank accounts with the wide array of fintech companies gracing the continent.

With the confluence of these two events we can expect to see a shift to e-commerce, and the Facebook suite of apps (Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp) will no doubt be a priority for these transactions.

Y Combinator summer cohort

9 African startups have made it into the now infamous Y Combinator summer cohort of 2021, for which there are only 2 intakes a year. The startups will each receive $125K in seed funding, expert mentorship, and access to some of the world’s most prestigious VC’s come demo day. The startups are spread across both Sub-Saharan and North Africa.

Nigeria is represented by car parts marketplace Mecho Autotech, Suplias, a B2B marketplace for mom and pop stores, and Lemonade Finance. Egypt is represented by insurance brokerage Amenli, car parts marketplace Odiggo and last-mile delivery firm, ShipBlu.

Morocco has two representatives in the form of B2B e-commerce platform, Chari, and Freterium, a logistics SaaS platform. On-demand wage access platform, Floatpays, out of South Africa completes the list.

Home grown investment

We’ve recently written about the need for more investment into African startups by Africans. Well, last week showed that the wheels are certainly in motion. Lagos-based GetEquity closed a six figure pre-seed funding round to launch its first product - a venture-funding platform that connects entrepreneurs and investors.

Their mission is simple - to reduce friction between founders and investors by giving them access to a wide range of funding options. Startups can list themselves on the GetEquity platform and market to institutional investors and public users. Investors can buy equity in a listed startup for as little as $10.

In the News 🚀

🇳🇬 Nigerian unicorn, Flutterwave has appointed Oluwabankole Falade as Chief Regulatory and Government Relations Officer to help the company navigate the rather complex government policies that have caused the startup issues in the past.

🇳🇬 Nigerian ticketing startup Tix Africa has closed a six-figure pre-seed funding round to scale its product offering and also expand operations across West and East Africa.

🇿🇦 South African startup iNNOHEALTH has secured a seven-figure seed investment from an unnamed Hong Kong-based VC for its AI-based healthcare platform.

🇪🇬 Egyptian healthtech startup Yodawy has raised a $7.5 million Series B funding round to help grow out its product offering and expand into new markets.

What challenge does Third Design solve?

We empower everyone to design immersive experiences. 3D has long been a field for experts, but it has shown promise of being the next medium in media consumption. Our platform enables non-technical people to create 3D scenes, animate them and publish them easily without having to download or learn any software.

What‘s the story behind the company?

Originally, my co-founders and I were mixed-reality enthusiasts. Back in 2015, the Microsoft Hololens announcement blew our minds with what is possible. We took the view that MR (Mixed Reality) would be the future of computing so we set our careers on that path. 

I was a game developer, Cherif (CIO) was a mixed reality developer and Amine (CTO) was a cloud and devops engineer. 

While building games and MR experiences, we noticed that an average experience can take us from 3 to 12 months in development time, so we thought, if we’re struggling to ship fast, maybe others like us are too.

That led us to understand that the basic 3D creation tools are not as democratised as 2D (look at Canva, Figma or even Adobe), so why not bring that future closer for everyone?

How did you get Third Design off the ground?

From the get go we wanted to steer clear of any competitions and contests, focusing our time on shipping value for one of our customers, a local automotive company. We understood a simple business principle that the more value you create for your customers the faster you grow. So we acted on this.

We got scouted by Flat6Labs Tunis, where we raised our first pre-seed round. They provided us with support and mentorship during their acceleration program. From there on, we joined multiple programs in Station F in Paris, but most importantly partnering with Zendesk to bring our solution to the customer experience space.

We raised with Kepple Africa Ventures and some Tunisian and French business angels after that, in order to be able to focus on finding product-market-fit and growing from there. So far we’ve raised a total of $250K.

What went into building the early stage product?

As we are 3 technical co-founders, we leveraged the “customer discovery method” by Steve Blank to try and decide what to build. Many mistakes were made, but we were able to iterate very fast. We shipped tens of iterations, with learnings on the market coming from each one.

What’s your tech stack?

We delivered on many platforms early on but now we are focusing our efforts on the web, distributing under a SaaS model. Leveraging the cloud from our different providers, namely AWS and Google.

Where do you currently operate?

Currently we are based out of Tunis and Paris. Our product is international by nature so we certainly have big ambitions from that perspective.

What’s the existing startup landscape like in Tunisia?

Tunisia has one of the most promising tech landscapes in Africa, capitalising on a proximity to the European market in terms of geography and culture. Many tech firms set up shop in Tunisia due to access to top quality talent at very competitive costs.

The startup scene is flourishing especially with things like “The Startup Act” which puts the legislative groundwork to help entrepreneurs and investors alike. Certainly there is a lot of “legacy” legislation putting one roadblock after another for founders, but what are founders without challenges ?

What’s your business model?

A subscription model which is free for now. We truly want to democratise 3D.

What metric do you use to measure success and why?

Happy customers is our only metric. We measure happiness by two things: the amount of output (aka content generated) and NPS scores. The customers side is pretty easy to grasp - we measure MAU’ (monthly active users).

What’s the most useful tool you use in your business?

One of the most useful things is to “not get held up on tools”. Picking a tool can become a task in itself, we’d rather focus on results, no matter the tool. On the collaboration end, we took a bet on Teams as early as mid-2019, and that bet paid off.

Third Design was recently selected as one of 15 companies to join Google’s Startup Accelerator for Africa. Can you tell us more about the application process?

GFSAA has a smooth yet selective selection process. The whole thing was a breeze and we enjoyed meeting and chatting with the Google team. We share the same values of lifting and uplifting the continent, and here we are working with google towards that.

What company do you look to for inspiration and why?

There are many companies we look up to, namely, Github, Stripe (Paystack wink wink), but let’s stick to our field. Canva did something nobody thought was possible - making everyone a designer. The whole story of digital inclusion and giving superpowers to everyone is inspiring, that’s what we aim to achieve.

What’s the most important lesson you’ve learnt so far?

Thinking actively about the product and customers. Everything else is noise. It’s easy to get lost in the noise or get bad feedback. Knowing where you are in terms of stage and what you need at that stage is crucial, a matter of life and death for your company.

What are your views on the African tech ecosystem?

The tech boom is coming, the internet is changing mindsets across the region by educating people and setting higher standards. 

Not all people who want higher living standards flee their homes, some, choose to stay and create that reality here. In the next century, we’ll be telling the stories of those who stayed and created opportunities for others.

In the News 🚀

🇳🇬 Nigerian neobank FairMoney has raised a $42m Series B round to accelerate global growth.

🇲🇦 Moroccan fintech startup Yalla Xash has raised $675k funding to expand internationally.

🇪🇬 Egyptian B2B e-commerce startup MaxAB has closed a $40m Series A to enable expansion across the MENA region.

🇳🇬 Nigerian fintech startup TeamApt has completed an undisclosed Series B funding round after a recent pivot from B2B to B2C.