Kenya's mSurvey Secures $3.5m Series A Investment
mSurvey, the mobile-first consumer feedback platform for businesses and consumers in Africa, today announces a Series A round of USD$3.5m, led by Africa focused venture firm TLcom Capital with investment from Social Capital, Kapor Capital, Golden Palm, and Richard Owen; founding team of Net Promoter Score (NPS). This follows Seed Investment rounds from Cross Culture Ventures, Alpha Angels and Safaricom’s Spark Venture Fund. The investment will enable the company to continue building out its infrastructure and partnerships, in order to scale and expand into more African countries.
Headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, and with a recently launched office in Lagos, Nigeria, mSurvey leads the way in developing in-depth understanding into the African consumer, gathering real-time insights via mobile SMS conversations with its Voice of the Customer and Consumer Wallet products, as well as through its successful launch of Net Promoter Score [NPS] in Africa. Last year alone, the company conducted over 12M conversations with consumers on the continent and works with businesses such as Commercial Bank of Africa, Kenya Commercial Bank, Safaricom, Airtel, Java House, Liberty Insurance, and Britam as well as US-based companies and institutions including Harvard, Emory and CNN.
mSurvey is the first to bring increased visibility and understanding of the African consumer, coupled with two-way conversations between businesses and their customers. Over 66% of Africa’s economic activity takes place in the informal sector, making it challenging for any business to understand who their customer really is, and hindering the analysis of feedback. Through partnerships with leading mobile network operators such as Kenya’s Safaricom, mSurvey is able to comprehensively map a customer’s journey through every single touchpoint, allowing businesses to identify any weak spots that exist within their product or service delivery, directly from the source; the customer. For example, Chloride Exide, an energy company in East Africa, can now map their customer journey via 5 touch points allowing them to understand and improve efficiencies and this has resulted in 800% growth.
Commenting on today’s announcement, Dr. Kenfield Griffith, mSurvey co-founder and CEO says, “Completing our Series A round allows us to tackle this difficult, yet enormous opportunity that exists in connecting African consumers with businesses to develop trust, and ensuring that millions more two-way conversations can take place each year. African consumers will be spending $2.1 trillion a year on consumer goods by 2025, a growth rate of at 4.5%[1]. We see mSurvey as a strategic partner for thousands of companies who are part of this growth trajectory.”
“Businesses looking to compete in Africa, those already operating on the continent, or international companies looking to expand here, cannot build a detailed, reliable or robust understanding of their customer base through arbitrary pen and paper interviews taken in small, mostly urban, hubs. This requires in-depth and continuous conversations to get to what is really important to consumers on the continent. mSurvey offers a unique proposition in that we can deliver these far-reaching and valuable conversations with customers, at scale. The trust that we have helped build between consumers and brands in Africa is, I believe, a unique and compelling proposition that has helped us secure this investment. We will be working with our investors, at a strategic level to ensure we continue impacting business-ready companies looking to grow in Africa,” added Claire Munene, mSurvey’s Chief Commercial Officer.
“mSurvey is enabling the supply side of the vast underserved consumer markets in Africa to have a much better understanding of their customers. Large corporates and SMEs desperately need more data on the African consumer to serve a growing demand that is only reachable via the mobile platform. This is a unique business proposition with the potential of scaling quickly and transforming the way African consumers are finally understood and properly served.” said Andreata Muforo, Partner at TLcom Capital, who is joining the board of mSurvey.
TLcom Capital has a diverse team with backgrounds in investment, entrepreneurship, and government, with a unique focus on Africa. The firm is the only African VC firm that has achieved significant exits in the African technology space so far, with an unparalleled track record in selecting African pioneering companies such as Andela and Terragon.
Africa is one of the world’s youngest, fastest growing and most dynamic emerging markets, yet many business’ knowledge around who their customers are or how their customers feel about their service remains relatively opaque. mSurvey is the first platform to reach consumers at every touchpoint, via mobile, or indeed comprehensively map the African customer experience. mSurvey’s technology channels the dialogue between business and consumer and the benefits are twofold; customers have a safe and trusted platform to have their say and engage with brands they interact with regularly, whilst businesses can communicate directly with their customers and use that real-time feedback to improve their business operations, positively affecting their bottom line, by reducing both Customer Acquisition Cost [CCA] and Customer Retention Cost [CRC] and churn. On average, mSurvey-powered companies record new product delivery, service efficiencies, and new services.
Data from GSMA reveals that unique mobile subscriber numbers in Africa will increase by 6.2% [CAGR] from 420m in 2016 to 535m in 2020.[2] Leveraging the continent’s most powerful communication tool, the mobile phone, mSurvey allows businesses of any size to engage with their audience and develop a stronger relationship with their audience. The mobile phone is the single most powerful technology which has the potential scale and power to normalize access - giving consumers on the continent the power of choice and businesses the power of knowing; building trusted relationships between businesses and consumers.
