- Termii is a Nigerian communications platform-as-a-service startup.
- Future Africa and Kepple Africa Ventures led the funding round.
- Termii plans to tap into the wealth of experience of investors.
- The company leverages a virtual wallet system tied to a bank account and customers.
Ideally, it is expected of every business to reach its customers effectively. However, that’s not the case, as limiting factors that hinder proper digital communication come into play at different growth stages. Termii, a Nigerian communications platform-as-a-service startup that solves this problem for African businesses, announced today that it has closed a $1.4 million seed round.
The round was co-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.
The Company secures investment from Lagos-based VC Microtraction.
The company officially launches and subsequently secures investment from Lagos-based VC Microtraction. The company found product-market fit two years later after collating enough data from companies in different industries to understand what they really wanted. Termii found out that in addition to assisting businesses to retain customers, there was a clear need to verify, authenticate and engage them.
After making some tweaks, the team began to see an increase in customer numbers, especially amongst fintech startups. Positioning itself in the fast-moving space, Termii created an API-based communication infrastructure. As it caters to more than 500 fintech startups across the continent. That’s not all. More than 1,000 businesses and developers are also using Termii’s API.
With this new fundraising, the company plans to tap into the wealth of experience from some of its new investors like Oviosu and Serunjogi, who have their own local companies into expansion phases.
Termii runs a B2B2C model, with a growth rate of 6% annually.
Some of these businesses include uLesson, Yassir, Helium Health, PiggyVest, Bankly, Paga, and TeamApt. Playing in a $3.6 billion B2C communications market estimated to grow 6% annually, Termii runs a B2B2C model. While a subscription-based model would’ve made sense, the two years spent by the company trying to find PMF made them think otherwise.
So the company leverages 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 toward customers’ contacts.
