Gameball, a customer intelligence and marketing CRM platform for consumer companies, has completed a $3.5 million financing round to drive its worldwide expansion. 500 Global, Africa-focused funds P1 Ventures and Launch Africa, as well as Middle East businesses Seedra Ventures, Arzan Ventures, Propeller, and Core Vision, all participated in the company’s seed round. Regional angel investors also participated in this round.
The cash will be used by Gameball to drive product commercialization, enterprise customer acquisition, and strategic hiring.
Why The Investors Invested
Since its inception, Gameball has served over 7,000 businesses, 20 million users, and processed over $260 million in monthly transactions. As part of its expansion strategy, Gameball will establish teams in Saudi Arabia, Germany, and the United Kingdom, as well as engage in product commercialization.
Hisham Halbouny, General Partner at P1 Ventures said, “The consumer landscape is evolving rapidly with brands competing for customer engagement, trust and retention. Gameball is solving a large multi-billion dollar challenge that can transform digital marketing, customer loyalty and monetisation around the world. We are thrilled to back the team on their journey as they grow their footprint in new markets.”
A Look At What The Startup Does
In 2020, Egyptian entrepreneurs Ahmed Khairy, Chief Executive Officer, Ahmed El Assy, Chief Product Officer, and Omar Alfar, Chief Technology Officer launched Gameball.
The Gameball platform is an effective marketing solution that provides omnichannel merchants with a 360-degree picture of all customer interactions and journeys. The Gameball product suite enables businesses to analyse consumer behaviour, exploit first-party data, uncover monetization opportunities, and implement retention tactics. Its completely integrated marketing suite provides marketers with customer analytics and segmentation, incentive and loyalty management, and cross-channel messaging, assisting in driving customer conversion and customised engagement while offering businesses with rich data and insights.
Ahmed Khairy, CEO of Gameball said, “We built Gameball to help global brands to analyse customer behaviour, accelerate customer retention, monetise their user base and improve customer lift-time value (LTV), all through one platform. With 7,000+ clients, 20 million consumers and transactions worth $260 million processed every month, we are excited about entering new markets and building our on-ground presence. This seed round brings on board renowned investors who will help fuel our growth, marking a critical milestone for us, as we evolve into a truly global platform.”
According to Gameball data, 61% of organisations estimate that repeat customers account for more than half of their revenue, with new client acquisition costing 5x more than keeping current ones. Gameball clients have a 3x higher purchase frequency than the industry average. The top five clients who use Gameball’s rules-based promotions have a 7x boost in purchase frequency compared to the industry average.
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Gameball works with major businesses to provide 360-degree visibility on consumer touchpoints by operating within the enterprise’s systems. This improves team cooperation while providing businesses with insights to develop meaningful engagement.
Gameball collaborates with businesses across the digital economy, including e-commerce, retail, fintech, and others, using a strong API-first engine that prioritises user privacy. Sega, Xiaomi, Experience Philippines, and Breadfast are among Gameball’s current clients. Gameball also offers plugins for markets like as Shopify and Magento, as well as homegrown platforms such as Zid (in Saudi Arabia) to help you get started quickly.
Gameball was founded in the Middle East and serves clients all around the world. Gameball will continue to invest in up-market expansion, new employees, double down on growth, and product innovation over the next 12 months.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard