Termil a Nigerian communications platform-as-a-service startup raises $1.4 million seed round.
The round was led by African early-stage VC firm, Future Africa and Japanese but Africa-focused VC Kepple Africa Ventures. Other investors include Acuity Ventures, Aidi Ventures, Assembly Capital, Kairos Angels, Nama Ventures, RallyCap Ventures, and Remapped Ventures.
Angel investors like Ham Serunjogi, co-founder and CEO of Chipper Cash; Josh Jones, former co-founder and CTO, Dreamhost; and Tayo Oviosu, co-founder and CEO of Paga also participated.
Launched in 2017 by Gbolade Emmanuel and Ayomide Awe, Termii provides an infrastructure that enables digital businesses to communicate seamlessly with their customers. Their Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) ensures a 90% deliverability rate, allowing digital businesses to enjoy similar ease of customer communication as their offline counterparts.
The startup created an API-based communication infrastructure that caters to over 500 fintech startups across the continent. More than 1,000 businesses and developers including uLesson, Yassir, Helium Health, Piggyvest, Bankly, Paga, and TeamApt use Termii’s API.
Termii runs a B2B2C model and they leverage on a virtual wallet system tied to a bank account and customers can make payments to the platform using mobile money, bank transfer, and credit cards. The startup charges these wallets on a per-message basis. It also does the same on every successful customer verification made towards customers’ contacts.
According to TechCrunch, the company’s revenue is growing 60% month-on-month as a result of the surge in online financial transactions which to date makes up for 68% of the company’s total messaging transactions.
The funding will be used for expansion and to also launch more messaging offerings across Africa. the company has its sights on North Africa with a physical presence in Algeria for the expansion. Algeria accounted for 15% of the company’s messaging transactions while Nigeria had 76%.
Satoshi Shinada, partner at Kepple Africa Africa said, “Fragmented and unstable communication channels are one of the biggest challenges for the digitization of businesses in Africa. Emmanuel has proven that with his visionary goals and solid implementation of iterations on the ground, his team is unparalleled to build an innovative solution in this space.”
