Digital commerce startup tappi raised $1.5 M Pre-seed funding from VC firm Acasia Ventures
Acasia Ventures, an Egyptian venture capital firm, participated in a pre-seed funding round of $1.5 million for tappi, a Kenyan digital commerce startup. Leading the round were Mercy Corps Ventures and Chui Ventures, with advisors from Google and Salesforce, as well as international venture capital firms and angel investors.
tappi is a software as a service (SaaS) platform that was founded in 2022 by CEO Kenfield Griffith and co-founder Louis Majanja. Its goal is to digitize the millions of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Africa by providing lead generation and marketing solutions.
Using the platform, millions of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), which make up 90% of all businesses in Africa and provide 60% of jobs in the region, can simply create and manage their own online presence in order to draw in and keep clients. Companies can handle and manage lead generation, build their own customized landing page, find and acquire new customers online, improve marketing campaigns, and boost sales growth once they sign up with Tappi. They can also use tappi to receive digital payments from clients, and they can use their mobile phone credit to pay for online advertising campaigns.
In other words, tappi helps MSMEs meet their financial needs by enabling them to pay for online marketing through their mobile phone plan and by enabling them to create online storefronts.
Despite its recent launch, tappi has established a strong presence in Kenya and Nigeria. The company has successfully onboarded over 10,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) onto its platform by means of its on-the-ground strategy and collaborations with prominent mobile operators, including MTN in Nigeria.
“We know that there is a direct correlation between the growth of SMEs and the growth of the economy as a whole, and that is the needle we are trying to push in Africa,” Griffith explains. “Proper, organized data and simplified online presence management can empower these businesses and help them grow at a manageable scale.”
Finding and keeping customers as well as expanding their businesses are the biggest problems these MSMEs are facing, according to Majanja, a former software developer at UC Berkeley, and Griffith, who holds a Ph.D. in Design and Computation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
“Through our first startup, we realized that we were solving the problems of large companies, like banks and mobile operators. We soon came to realize that a lot of small businesses across the continent need the same services at an affordable price to be able to grow, and that is what we are trying to achieve with Tappi,” Griffith explains. “We’re truly excited to have Acasia Ventures on board, and are looking forward to working together to empower Africa’s SMEs to unlock their full potential.”
“MSMEs serve as the foundation of the African economy, but they remain underserved due to the lack of data, complex customer relationship management tools, and intricate payment systems,” Managing Partner at Acasia Ventures Aly El Shalakany explains. “tappi has gained substantial momentum since it launched just over a year ago, because they offer a compelling digital solution to the critical challenges of MSMEs across the continent. We are confident that Kenfield, Louis, and their world-class team will be able to pave the way for building stronger businesses in Africa.”
With the investment round, Tappi hopes to grow its team and establish a strong brand in addition to increasing its sales force and forming strategic alliances with operators throughout the continent.
