Customer engagement startup, Termii, has secured $3.65 million new funding round led by Ventures Platform, bringing its total funding to date to slightly $5 million. Other participants include New York-based fund FinTech Collective, Launch Africa Ventures, Nama Ventures, Aidi Ventures, Ralicap Ventures, Now Venture Partners, Vastly Valuable Ventures, NOA Capital, Assembly Investors, Probability Ventures, Adamantium Fund, MyAsia VC and Uncovered Fund. Angel investors such as the Afropreneur Angel Group, Aubrey Hruby, partner at Tofino Capital and Eamon Jubbawy of Onifido also participated in the funding round.
According to Emmanuel Gbolade, Termii CEO and Co-founder, Termii is simply as an API-based communication infrastructure that allows businesses, particularly fintechs, to engage customers via different channels, including SMS, voice messaging, mobile tokens, alerts, and a two-way support system.
In 2021 when the customer engagement platform banked $1.4 million in seed funding, it served more than 500 fintechs (they make up 89% of its customer base), including Chipper, Paystack, Moniepoint, Piggyvest, among others and over 1,000 businesses and developers used its APIs. Now, over 10,000 businesses rely on the startup’s API and no-code campaign dashboard for terminating SMS and voice messages monthly according to CEO Emmanuel. He added that Termii’s annual recurring revenue consequently increased 30x, and message transactions on its platform grew from a million to 400 million within this timeframe.
The purpose of the new funding is not needed for operational activities but rather to power the company’s expansion initiatives: developing and promoting existing and new products in new markets with a priority to Francophone African countries, starting with the Ivory Coast, and not North Africa as earlier planned. With this new funding, the Nigerian startup plans to expand into new markets within Africa and with a special focus on Francophone Africa.
The Y Combinator-backed startup will also be expanding its product offerings with TermiGo, which Gbolade describes as the future of Termii. TermiGo is a mobile app with an authenticator feature that also allows companies to reach out to their companies directly through the app. Unlike Google Authenticator which is only used for time-based OTP, Gbolade said allowing businesses to communicate with their users through the platform is a world’s first. The company has already increased its revenue by 3000% since its last funding in 2021, and with this new funding, it must just be able to fulfil its mission to revolutionize customer engagement on the continent.
