Gozem , the leading multi-vertical super app platform in West & Central Africa, has announced has raised $5 million Series A round from corporate and institutional investors spread across four continents with specialties in healthtech, fintech, and mobility. The main investors of the round include: AAIC, Thunes (TransferTo), Momentum Ventures (SMRT), Innoport Ventures (Schulte Group), CMC Ventures (National Express) and Liil Ventures (Mobility ADO). This funding round follows $7 million raised in previous seed rounds from investors such as Plug & Play Ventures (USA), Launch Africa Ventures (South Africa), Bansea (Singapore), Virtual Network (Switzerland), and others. Including today’s Series A, Gozem has raised a total of $12 million to date. “We are excited and delighted to have attracted global investors that share our common vision of building digital ecosystems. This latest round of financing will be instrumental in helping Gozem develop more services in its Super App and expand geographically,” said Gozem Co-Founder Raphael Dana. Launched in Lome, Togo in 2018, Gozem began as a single motorcycle-taxi ride-hailing service and in three years has become Francophone Africa’s leading Super App with a portfolio of services that includes transport of passengers and goods, ecommerce and food delivery, financing, and soon digital banking. Gozem’s team is now 250 members strong, split between its four active markets: Togo, Benin, Gabon and Cameroon. With this latest round of financing, Gozem will prepare its expansion into DRC, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In addition to geographical expansion, Gozem will continue to deepen its vertical offerings especially in Fintech with its Lending and Digital Banking solutions that will help Gozem fulfill its goal of empowering local communities. “In the first 8 months of operations of our Vehicle Leasing program, Gozem has been able to lease close to 1,500 vehicles to drivers. This round of investment will help us accelerate this effort of providing easy and affordable financing solutions to drivers and lease more than 200,000 vehicles in the next 3 years,” said Gozem Co-Founder Gregory Costamagna. Gozem’s strategic investors will be instrumental in helping Gozem deepen its expertise in each of its business verticals. “The TransferTo group is excited to participate in the Gozem adventure, to support its needs and bring them its expertise and knowledge of African markets. Gozem’s Super App will soon provide various mobility and digital payment services to millions of users which will help position them as a leader in Francophone Africa,” said Allan Green, Chairman of TransferTo. “We’re excited to see so many mobility players joining us in this round to help Gozem deploy more mobility features and explore various mass transit opportunities,” said Nadim Matuk, Investment Principal at Liil Ventures. Share

Gozem, Africa’s  Super App, raises $5 million  Series A funding for expansion

GozemThe company confirmed to TechCrunch that a super app offering a variety of services, including Francophone Africa’s transportation, e-commerce and financial services, has raised $ 5 million in Series A funding... The Togolese and Singapore-based companies have received investments from AAIC, Thunes (TransferTo), Momentum Ventures (SMRT), Innoport Ventures (Schulte Group), CMC Ventures (National Express) and …
The post Francophone African super app Gozem grabs $5M to expand and offer more services – TechCrunch appeared first on California News Times.

Francophone African super app Gozem grabs $5M to expand and offer more services – TechCrunch

Gozem , a super app that provides a host of services — including transport, e-commerce and financial services in Francophone Africa — has raised $5 million in Series A financing, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The Togo- and Singapore-based company received investment from AAIC, Thunes (TransferTo), Momentum Ventures (SMRT), Innoport Ventures (Schulte Group), CMC Ventures (National Express) and Liil Ventures (Mobility ADO). It follows the $7 million raised in previous seed rounds via three tranches from investors such as U.S. firm Plug and Play Ventures, Launch Africa, BANSEA and Virtual Network. In total, the multi-vertical application has raised over $12 million. The startup kicked off operations in Togo in 2018 as a motorcycle ride-hailing service. A plan to replicate the model of Grab and Gojek in Southeast Asia saw Gozem expand its transport verticals to include taxi and tricycle services across multiple cities in Togo and Benin. As the pandemic hit, the platform halted its geographic expansion moves and went vertical. It introduced e-commerce and logistics plays, allowing merchants to list an inventory of products users want and get them delivered through its drivers. Then the company launched an asset financing option for its drivers, employing a lease-to-own model for vehicles and associated equipment. On a call with the founders, the chairman, Costamagna, said the three verticals work together to increase the disposable income of drivers. Gozem’s premise is that it creates a win-win situation wherein its drivers become the next middle-class population in Francophone Africa while its super app plans take effect flawlessly. “So people [merchants, suppliers, companies] that find a lot of interest working with them [riders], will then work hard and provide a lot of different services to our customer base,” he said. “And when we do this, we increase their disposable income by sending them more passengers, more delivery trips by adding more merchants on our platform and finding companies that want to use delivery services. We also reduce their cost of operation through asset financing because they have no formal alternative and it’s generally informal and expensive.”
Since Gozem started the lease model, it has provided up to 1,500 vehicles to drivers. Costamagna, in a statement, said the funding will help Gozem increase the figure to over 200,000 before 2025. Image Credits: Gozem
Now that Gozem is present across 13 cities, having moved to Gabon and Cameroon with over 800,000 registered users and completed more than 5 million trips, the founders say the company is setting sights on providing digital banking services and lending to its users. It’s a model other super app companies across Africa have adopted in the past, such as Nigeria’s OPay (which has since shelved its super app plans to strengthen its financial services arm) and SafeBoda  more recently. Other players like North Africa-focused Yassir are also looking to offer banking and payment services. Gozem plans to use its existing network of marketplace users (drivers and merchants) as agents across all the cities it operates in. This way, individual users can exchange cash for mobile money via the Gozem app. “I think we have a fantastic differentiator. Generally speaking, our competitors are the telco, which offers mobile money services, and sometimes you have standalone digital wallets as well,” said Costamagna. “What we’re trying to offer is an integrated wallet solution that is included in a suite of different services. And so the key difference in the market is this. Before Francophone Africa minted its first unicorn in the form of fintech startup Wave , which shed some light on the opportunities that abound in the market, Francophone Africa has been largely left out of the tech and startup disruption sweeping across other African regions, particularly in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt. It was the very reason why the founders started Gozem in the first place, they told me. “Almost 95% of the money and the attention goes to always four, five countries in Africa … Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt,” said Dana. “But generally, Francophone Africa is a bit left on the side on all the significant traction. This is where we’ve seen the big opportunities in Francophone as a nice market.”
And having built companies in Singapore before Gozem, Dana and Costamagna brought Ajene on board, adding his on-the-ground African expertise to a team with vast knowledge of the Southeast Asian market. Three years in, Gozem is now 250-staff strong in its four markets. The company will use the Series A financing to expand into more Francophone African countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Senegal and Ivory Coast. The company is also looking to improve its asset financing model while fully launching its financial services. “Where we operate on the continent is kind of what some might call second-tier African markets. But we have an opportunity and believe in the model we’re pursuing. It’s really a wide berth where there’s lesser competition, as discussed across all our verticals. While we are operating in four countries, we want to be embedded across the region over the next year,” Ajene said.

Francophone African super app Gozem grabs $5M to expand and offer more services

| #VentureCanvas
Gautham Kadri | AMBCrypto
TransferTo, a global cross-border mobile payments network recently announced that the company is looking forward to work with Stellar to improve the way in which currency is transferred across national borders. Through this association, many of the financial institutions and partners of both the companies will benefit from the combined network coverage and gain access to the new technologies that will enable them to send and receive money across the globe. TransferTo is an organization based in Singapore that deals with digital value services for upcoming markets. It is a B2B mobile settlement system serving top companies like PayPal, Western Union, 7 Eleven, World Remit, Money gram and Tigo mobile money. The organization works a worldwide versatile installment network connecting different financial institutions and online budgetary specialist co-ops over the planet.

Stellar Lumens [XLM] partners with TransferTo to strengthen foreign money transfers | #VentureCanvas

Safaricom (NSE Kenya: SCOM) is a mobile network operator in Kenya. It was formed in 1997 as a fully owned subsidiary of Telkom Kenya.

Safaricom

PayPal , Safaricom and TransferTo have partnered to enable Kenyans to move money between their M-PESA and PayPal accounts .

PayPal, Safaricom and TransferTo to streamline money transfers in Kenya

Cargills Bank is a Sri Lanka-based financial solutions provider that offers customers a range of banking products and investment services.

Cargills Bank

Cargills Bank has partnered with TransferTo , a leading cross-border mobile payments network for emerging markets , enhance and strengthen its remittance services offered by the bank .

Cargills Bank fortifies Remittance Services partnering TransferTo.

Grab (NASDAQ: GRAB) is an on-demand transportation and mobile payments platform, offering private car, motorbike, taxi, and carpooling services in Southeast Asia. The platform features GrabPay Credits, a cashless top-up payment option; the 'Share your Ride' function, which allows users to share their journey through social media or messaging apps with friends and family, providing extra security for passengers; and the ability to rate drivers and view their information.

Grab

TransferTo has been selected by Grab to enable real-time earnings payouts for Grab drivers using their GrabPay account .

TransferTo, Grab to deliver real-time digital payments in South-East Asia

galaxia communications

Wirecard focuses on software and IT specialist for outsourcing and white label solutions for payment processing and issuing products. The company supports companies in accepting electronic payments from all sales channels. It offers a global multi-channel platform that bundles international payment acceptances and methods, flanked by fraud prevention solutions. When it comes to issuing payment instruments in the form of cards or mobile payment solutions, Wirecard provides companies with an end-to-end infrastructure, including the requisite issuing licenses for card and account products.

Wirecard

SigFox

Oberthur Technologies

Intracom Telecom

Gemalto

TransferTo is a cross-border mobile payment and digital value services network for emerging markets. The company is based in Singapore.

Name	Work History	Title	Status
Thierry Siminger	SigFox, Oberthur Technologies, Intracom Telecom, and Gemalto	Chief Commercial Officer	Current
Aik Boon Tan		Chief Commercial Officer, Executive Vice President	Former

Name	Thierry Siminger	Aik Boon Tan
Work History	SigFox, Oberthur Technologies, Intracom Telecom, and Gemalto
Title	Chief Commercial Officer	Chief Commercial Officer, Executive Vice President
Status	Current	Former

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