Cairo-based consumer tech startup Wasla has raised $1 million in seed to fuel its go-to-market strategy, grow the team, and introduce new product verticals with a focus on financial inclusion.
“We are very happy to have reached this milestone, we couldn’t have achieved it if it wasn’t for the hard work and excitement put forward by our team. Now, we start to rapidly scale our user base while further developing our two new product verticals which shall be introduced during 2020. Finally, we are grateful to the investors who continue to show their support and excitement to help us build our vision further,” Wasla’s co-founders, Serag Meneassy and Taymour Sabry; and an investment banker Mahmoud El Said said in a joint statement.
Here Is The Deal
- This round of funding came from Egypt Ventures, Glint Ventures, and Ebtikar for Financial Investments, with participation from a group of angel investors.
- This brings Wasla’s total investment made since its launch in 2018 to $1.2 million.
- Wasla claims to have attracted over 100,000 users organically without any marketing efforts since the launch of its beta version in December 2018,
“This initial traction allowed Wasla to prove product-market fit and the growing need for affordable mobile internet,” the startup said in a statement.
Starting with Egypt, Wasla aims to provide free or subsidized internet to over 500 million users in emerging markets (mainly Africa) over the next few years.
“Based on average hourly income, in Africa, the average individual needs to work for 29 hours to be able to afford 2GB of mobile internet, compared to 40 minutes in North America and Europe. With almost 76% of global growth in mobile internet subscribers originating from emerging markets, the problem is only getting bigger,” Wasla noted in a statement.
Why The Investors Invested
Egypt Ventures, the lead investor is an investment firm established in 2017 and seeded by the Egyptian Ministry of Investment and International Cooperation with a mandate of supporting and investing in startups from a diverse range of sectors across Egypt. Egypt Ventures has created a blended finance model through which investments are directed into accelerators, venture capital firms, and startups at the early and growth stages.
‘‘We invest in innovation-driven enterprises led by strong and resilient entrepreneurs that have the potential to create high economic value and compete on an international level. Egypt Ventures aims to cultivate and foster a startup culture in the Egyptian economy, catalyze the development of the entrepreneurship ecosystem, and build economic competitiveness leading to GDP growth,’’ the Ventures stated on its website.
Egypt Ventures invests in high growth startups with strong market potential.
‘‘We look for startups with well-balanced teams driven by resilient leadership, and following a clearly defined path to business scalability,’’ it further stated.
A Look At What Wasla Does
Founded in 2018 by former Rocket Internet entrepreneurs; Serag Meneassy and Taymour Sabry; and an investment banker Mahmoud El Said, Wasla has developed a mobile browser that rewards users with free internet. The users earn points for surfing the web on Wasla Browser and the points can then be used to recharge their prepaid phone lines or pay their bill (in case they have a postpaid connection).
Wasla does this by leveraging digital advertising. The startup allows brands to run targeted ads, in both display and its proprietary conversion formats. Wasla also provides complimentary services including affiliate marketing and field research.
The browser that comes with localized content and aggregated digital services can be used by anyone across the world but currently rewards users (with free internet) only in Egypt.
Wasla co-founders, said that they’ve been speaking to over 10,000 users through daily outbound calls, in-product surveys, and user interviews to validate their next steps,
“We have gathered all that user feedback and have released 11 product versions this year focused on improved performance and stability (reduced app size from 64MB to 20MB on our newest version). We have also been able to organically scale our user base and double our daily engagement from 19min/day to 38min/day while continuing to refine our product and build new features.”
“We also introduced new features such as WaslaFeed, a localized content aggregator that has both a standalone website which has a regional audience, and an API that serves personalized content to Wasla Browser users through the app. In addition to new and wider redemption options for our users through strong and growing partnerships with financial institutions,” they added.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world