Launching The Base – Market Intelligence Platform For Startups, VCs, PEs In Africa
In the 14 months of our existence, we have churned a-lot of data and insights on the ever-growing African Startup landscape.
In our multiple interactions with stakeholders, we were incessantly told by startups, investors, incubators, accelerators, professionals and government officials, that they couldn’t find each other!
The hurdle of navigating has existed and will in every nascent ecosystem. Add to that the complexities that shadow the lengths and breadths of a whole continent like Africa with 54 different countries having 618 active startup hubs and growing.
The keen-eyed readers would have noticed that last month we quietly launched a new website in our network called “The Base”.
The Base is a market intelligence platform for the venture ecosystem across Africa. This data platform aims to provide a continuous snapshot of African startups, venture capitalists, PEs to the online world.
The Base – Some Features
Company Profiles – Comprehensive profiles of tech-enabled businesses focussed on the African market. Covering data points including a non-qualitative brief of the company, founder, funding information etc.
We understand what investors want to see in a startup, and we’ll help you put your decision making data all at one place.
Investor Profiles – No data platform in the world currently focusses on African VCs and PEs. To find the information about their portfolio, investment approach, team, you have to go to their websites and check manually for it. We’re going to change this. Entrepreneurs, researchers and enthusiasts will now be able to track all the data on home-based & foreign tech venture funds, Incubators, Accelerators and Angels investing in Africa.
Venture Deals – All the latest deals and fundings of 2018 are highlighted in a dedicated section for the keen eyes who are tracking the African ecosystem diligently, along with us. Also, this pool of information is the base for our Annual Venture Capital Report.
Discussion Room – It is a section on our platform for stakeholders to voice out their opinion and opportunity to even find resources. We understand the importance of networking and being seen at events, but also reckon the fact that as an entrepreneur/investor, it is difficult to be at every place. Interactions are crucial to shaping up any growth movement; we just leveraged technology to make it more comprehensive and more accessible.
Following – To have information in a more understandable format, we have enabled features to follow profiles, news about those profiles and even notifications to alert you if there is a development on them. It works like a close web of information, where you can leverage the social aspects of data and be in touch with the profiles that you choose to follow.
Advanced Search – Our advanced search capabilities capitalize on our structured data format. In addition to simple keyword search, users can now search companies, financial organizations, and people by indicating unique criteria to which they want results to conform. For example, you can choose multiple filter options for a more tailored search.
Next Milestones
The site currently has entries on 1200 companies and over 150 venture funds and is growing with a speed of 50 companies every week.
But there still isn’t nearly enough data on TheBase. And WE want YOU to be in there too.
We want to encourage startups and investors to submit their details to The Base. This is a faster way of getting ‘on the platform’ and also helps others to research your company with the latest and more accurate data.
We are open to your feedback and would encourage you to tell us the shortfalls. This will help us in making “Africa’s first and largest community-led intelligence platform”, more reliable. In case of any questions or queries, do direct them to me at [email protected] or [email protected]
