CoinAfrique Concludes USD 3 Mn Series A Round
Senegal’s CoinAfrique has been a prominent player in French-speaking Africa as a classified advertisement platform, and with a Series A injection of USD 3 Mn their stake in Francophone Africa is only set to grow. They claim to be the “most downloaded classifieds app in French-speaking Africa,” with aims of superseding 10 million monthly users by 2022.
Matthias Papet and Eric Genetre had this to say about the investment, “The successful fundraising highlights the fact that CoinAfrique has positioned itself in a booming market and will allow us to accelerate our activities on our existing markets, while serving new countries and continuing to develop the best user experience, one that is always closest to the needs of our community of buyers and sellers. We will exceed 10 million monthly users by 2022.”
Launched in May 2015, the mobile app and web-based platform connect online sellers and buyers in over 16 African countries and five satellite offices on the continent. Their pride and glory is the ability to offer “fast, direct contact and relationship between buyers and sellers through call options, SMS and private chats online”. All of this made possible through easy searches, around the user or in specific locations.
Since its launch, the peer to peer mobile marketplace has registered more than 500, 000 downloads on the Google PlayStore, an indication of its uptake on the continent and a highlight of its appeal to investors. The concluded Series A funding round of USD 3 Mn, pales their first seed investment of USD 185 K and was a joint venture led by Investisseurs Partneaires and a group of investors represented by French Partners and Mercure International.
Head of Investisseurs & Patenaires Jean-Michel Severino, has only been full of praise for the startup’s growth potential citing that, “CoinAfrique is a promising company with huge growth potential, particularly in French-speaking West Africa. Indeed, CoinAfrique offers an innovative classified offer, based on the growing use of new technologies and adapted to the consumption habits of young people, a rapidly expanding age group. We are happy to support CoinAfrique in this new stage of its development to maximize its impact on small urban businesses in the region, be it in terms of sales growth, job creation or formalizing and structuring of these businesses.”
The impetus is now on CoinAfrique to realize the growth potential of its business model and reach the ambitious targets projected for 2022. Martial Konvi who serves as Head of Product has predicted that as an economic enabler CoinAfrique will realize their 2022 goal by capturing 10% of the 100 million francophone speaking users expected to be smartphone users in the next two years.
