Afridigest Week in Review: 3 million more for Talk360
+Thanks for a successful Afridigest Lagos Meetup +212 Founders S22 batch +Algebra Ventures to the moon +SNBL +Household food spending +Lots of media mentions about funding in Africa +More
The Afridigest Week in Review is a must-read weekly recap for Africa-focused founders, executives, and investors.
Welcome back, friends! The most clicked link from last week was 'Offline agent networks are driving Africa’s digital development.' And if you missed yesterday’s Fintech Review, click here. (Thanks to readers who called attention to the broken link to Carbon’s P&L statement, it’s been fixed in the web version and is available here.)
📌 Thanks to everyone who took the time out of their schedule to come out to the first Afridigest meetup in Lagos! I don’t take it for granted and I really enjoyed meeting you all. So much so that I’m already looking forward to the next one. 🙏🏽 🙏🏽 🙏🏽 More on this at the end of this newsletter.
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Week 40 2022: October 2-8
📰 Deal of the Week🇿🇦 Talk360, a South African/Dutch international calling platform, raised $3M in the second close of its seed round from HAVAÍC, Allan Gray E2 Ventures (AGEV), Kalon Venture Partners, E4E Africa, Endeavor, and others. This takes the total amount raised in the seed round to $7M.
About Talk360: Talk360 enables users to make international & local calls via Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) at lower calling rates than traditional telcos. Unlike WhatsApp and other services, however, only the caller needs the Talk360 app. The recipient receives the call as usual and doesn’t need an app, data, or even a smartphone.
The app has active users in over 170 countries, with particularly strong traction in South Africa and Zimbabwe. According to Talk360, the company has experienced 167% growth in customers and 130% growth in revenues since last year and has connected 2.3 million people worldwide so far this year.
Notably, the company distributes vouchers for call credit through a last-mile agent network and also plans to launch a pan-African payments platform in 2023.
Key personalities:
Hans Osnabrugge, Co-Founder & Group CEO
Dean Hiine, Co-Founder and Managing Director for Africa
Jorne Schamp, Co-Founder & CPMO
Ian Lessem, Managing Partner, HAVAÍC
In the Founder’s words: “Our mission is to bridge distance and connect lives by offering reliable, affordable, and easy-to-use digital services, delivered in a localized manner to all communities… But we’re not just solving socio-economic issues. We’re also offering micro-entrepreneurship and income-generating opportunities to our growing network of agents across the country.” — Dean Hiine
In the Investor’s words: “We invested more into Talk360 based on its strong progress in the South African market to date, as well as its potential in the rest of Africa. Since our first investment, the company has shown spectacular growth, and a genuine ability to crack the challenge of distribution in Africa.” — Ian Lessem
