Rwazi, a market development startup, has raised $4 million in a funding round led by Bonfire Ventures, with participation from Newfund Capital, and Alumni Ventures.
Launched in 2021 by Eric Sewankambo and Joseph Rutakangwa, Rwazi is a market intelligence platform that provides companies with actionable data from developing markets on who is buying what, for how much, from where, when, and why, to help them drive revenue and expand. They utilize a network of qualified masked mappers spread across 40+ countries in Africa and South Asia to collect data from their localities.
Already available in 40 countries in Africa, South Asia and Latin America, Rwazi intends to use the funds to increase its footprint in emerging markets including Africa and introduce new products.
Rutakangwa siad the duo was motivated to launch Rwazi due to the lack of current data and frustrations they met when they tried to get timely market insights in their previous jobs. So they set out to meet this need, by providing market insights backed by data collected directly from consumers.
Rwazi employs regular local consumers, called “mappers”, to collect data from shops and households. The company claims it currently has over 60, 000 mappers collecting data covering over 1.4 million outlets in 60+ Countries, Cities and Towns. These mappers get unit-level data like the product sizes bought, frequency of purchases, and geographic location of the consumers.
Mappers get paid when Rwazi verifies submissions after they logged their purchases on the company’s platform via the web or a mobile app.
Rutakangwa says that the company is rolling out new products this year that support different languages because this has been a barrier to its growth in the regions of operation. He believes that multi-language support will help them scale in their existing markets, while broadening the demographic data of their consumer data.
