DigsConnect, a South African digital student housing platform, has secured a pre-Series A round of investment to drive its global expansion with a focus on assisting African students in the UK and US acquire more reasonably priced, practical, and secure housing.
The DigsConnect website, developed by Alexandria Procter and Greg Ramsay-Keal, enables landlords, estate agents, and property managers to publish their property listings. Students can then browse and sift through these postings to locate housing that meets their needs as well as roommates.
The startup, which raised ZAR12 million (then US $830,000) in March 2019 and received a ZAR3 million (US $200,000) grant from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation last year, recently signed an agreement with Student.com, the largest student housing marketplace in the world, allowing it to expand its presence to about 30 new countries and 400 new cities. The company is growing its operations into the UK, US, Singapore, and Europe and already has over 1.3 million beds listed on its website.
After DigsConnect obtained pre-Series A investment from Launch Africa Ventures, Goodwater Capital, Five35 Ventures, and Delta Ventures, that growth has now been given a push. The firm will be able to scale its international operations thanks to this group of investors, dramatically accelerating its expansion plan.
“The tech startup industry is experiencing a funding winter at the moment, so the fact that we received so much early support from excellent pan-African and US investors speaks volumes about the strength of the team, the value of our strategic partnership with Student.com, our strategy of early profitability, and sound unit economics,” said Procter.
DigsConnect’s revenue traction, clever customer and inventory acquisition techniques, excellent founding team, and sizable total addressable market (TAM) in student housing, according to Zachariah George, general partner at Launch Africa Ventures, attracted to his organization.
“This investment provides interesting portfolio connectivity to several of our 115 portfolio companies who are interested in bettering university students globally,” he said.
