Kenyan mobile survey platform mSurvey has raised a Series A funding round of $3.5 million from a number of investors, led by TLcom Capital.
Africa-focused venture firm TLcom Capital contributed to the successful $3.5 million fundraising round, with investments from Social Capital, Kapor Capital, Golden Palm, and Richard Owen a founding member of Net Promoter Score (NPS), according to Forbes.
Kapor Capital, based in Oakland, California, has a track record of successfully funding black tech founders. Husband and wife Mitch Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein are something of an anomaly in Silicon Valley for their dedication to promoting diversity at the startups they invest in.
Based in Palo Alto, Social Capital invests in healthcare, financial services and education. Golden Palm Investments is a Ghanaian investment firm based out of Accra, with tech in Africa as a major focus. Investments include Andela, Flutterwave and now mSurvey.
mSurvey collects real-time data via surveys that use mobile phone messaging technology to interact with Kenyans, and the company has ambitions to provide these data services throughout the continent.
mSurvey’s platform does not require users to have an internet connection, as feedback can be collected from respondents via text messages.
MIT-educated founder and CEO Kenfield Griffith came up with the idea for the company following his struggles to attain actionable, credible and contextual data. He knew that a solution to that problem would be applicable to many emerging markets.
Over the last year, mSurvey, which has an office in San Francisco, has engaged with over 12 million consumers while serving clients such as Liberty Insurance, Safaricom, Airtel, CNN, and Harvard, Techpoint reported.
After recently opening an office in Nigeria, mSurvey has South Africa in its crosshairs. Much of this recent round of funding will be dedicated to breaking into the South African market and expanding mSurvey’s services to new African audiences.
“Our goal is to expand to South Africa in the next six to eight months. Most of the businesses that use mSurvey have operations in these countries so we are expanding to fill that demand and the demand from the markets. We are constantly listening to the market,” said CEO Griffith, according to Ventureburn.
“mSurvey is the first company to bring increased visibility and understanding of the African consumer, at every touch point and we are using Africa’s most powerful communications tool, the mobile phone, to accomplish this,” Griffith added.
