Looking to raise capital for your startup through equity crowdfunding? No loans? Just some hard currency from some money messiahs? That is what South African businesses are turning to now. Intergreatme has recently succeeded in raising over R32.7 million ($2.2 million) by simply putting up an online request for equity funding on Uprise.Africa and getting overwhelmed by public contributions. This was a big moment for the startup looking to help ordinary people get rid of the daily pain associated with submitting forms and documents through an innovative technology platform.

The startup was founded by a team of young South Africans three years ago and is now valued at about R120m. The team envisions a world where personal data can easily and securely be shared among a host of applications. As long as an activity requires a person’s information, Intergreatme sees a market. 

How The Startup Scaled The Hurdles and Raised The Funds

Narrating how the startup raised the funds through equity crowdfunding, Intertreatme CEO said in a recent interview:

We had no idea how successful it was going to be. We thought it was going to be like a 60 day campaign of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. We needed to get 250,000 that day and we hoped to just do some cold calls. I printed out my full contact list on my phone and my whatsapp list, my email list, and we thought it’s going to be a campaign. But we had no idea that the demand was more than that. We thought that we could raise the 24 million and we thought that we were going to procure a common amount ever. 

For startups looking to use crowdfunding to raise capital, he says they are not just going to put a pretty video online and hope people come and invest. They need to do the hard job behind the scenes.

‘‘There are billions and trillions of dollars of money waiting to be deployed,’’ he says. ‘‘People get paid money to invest money. But your business fundamentally needs to be right. Your team needs to be right. What you plan to do needs to be right. So do those things right. And then you can just sample your user base. Just run a poll on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, just saying, ‘‘Hey, if we rank car, would you invest? And if so, how much will you? You’ll get, you will get an answer. I don’t think you need to do a lot of work to get those answers. 

On the pattern of investing, he said about 402 people turned up and contributed to the startup through equity crowdfunding.

We had minimum commitment of 1000 rand and a maximum commitment of 5 million. We had about five, five millions. Wow. We had a couple of millions. It was so cool. We didn’t expect it. And it was just people. We started by saying, if you’ve used our technology before and you sure that you had the wow moment, would you like to invest in this? Tick this box, if you want. But ultimately they, they invested in us as people. 

Before that, we had a very successful launch party, which I think was key to the fundraising, where we had a private donation from our whatsapp list. This was two weeks before that. And we’ve got about 120 investors there. And then we had about 250 people at our launch party when the startup was first started. We used that time not to sell the technicalities of the business, but to sell out emotional stories as founders to show that it’s normal for us to overcome unrealistic odds. 

He said the crowd bought into the human stories and not the technicalities. 

‘‘We said it’s normal for us to overcome adversity and challenges, that it doesn’t matter what comes our way. It’s normal for us. We will find a way to succeed. And so people bought into the emotional story. They always say, you shouldn’t invest in a business. You should invest in people. And yeah, basically people bought the founder’s shares, in the founder’s energy, in the founder’s vision. And so literally everyone in that room at the launch party made us the first 27 million. And so we sold apps 27 millions in the first 72 hours and there were just a frenzy of people trying to jump on and grab the last time.

I think if you look inside now, it is 32 million, 409,000 rands. So they’ll have to be some refunds for some people who just came in and about a hundred people came in on the last day, like before three o’clock. 

On Why They Choose Uprise.Africa to Raise The Funds

He says Uprise.Africa has direct exposure to all the upsides and downsides of the business

‘‘I didn’t know who they were,’’ he says. ‘‘We made it a conference. I related with its CEO as a founder. She said cool. They have a framework and are licensed to do it. So effectively it’s as good as a payment gateway. So if you’re running an ecommerce business and pay fast or need paypal or visa, mastercard go to them for a widget. They can accept payments, but they’re relying on how good your business is . 

One of my favorite little proverbs is if a bird is sitting on a tree on the branch, it’s not worried about the branch snapping. It has faith and confidence is in its wings. Crowd funding is an easy way to take money from the crowd, but there’s a context to it. If we show the analytics of the money we raised, everyone is within one or two steps of our network. And so accountability is really your socially accountable tool to your community and your network. If they believe in you, you’re not going to have a much bigger responsibility to them.’’

He says Uprise.Africa will own a 25% stake in the startup.

‘‘They will also have an independent board member. Uprise.Africa will be representing the crowd and yeah, fix me. But there are voting rights and things. So Uprise.Africa has the stake on behalf of the people who invested in the initiative. I think they manage it for about 12 months or so and then they give it to us. They have also put automated technology in place for the share registers and the certificates and the reporting.’’

On Why More Black Women Invested In The Startup Through The Crowdfunding

‘‘I think maybe it’s because we spent a lot of time with Uber drivers and optimistic ladies and all security guards and receptionists. They used our technology and they’re like, sweet, I can get my license renewed. Daily visits to the management system are amazing. So it is just crazy for us because we actually thought that we were so proud that we managed to get 30% black female ownership. They were like, this company’s plan is going to dilute that potentially down to 22%. We had signed agreements to become level two. And so it was a concern. It was just, again, a miracle from the universe that it actually ended up swinging way better than we could give. I’ve imagined it. So I think that’s the beauty of opening it up to the crowd. If you’re focusing on one or two high net worth individuals, you’re kind of going for a specific target.’’

Other Startups In South Africa Are Also Resorting To Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is having a moment in SA. BackaBuddy, the funding project used to raise money for service station attendant Nkosikho Mbele, for example, has so far generated over R107 million for various causes.

Uprise.Africa CEO and co-founder Tabassum Qadir say the company is in negotiations with one of the new share trading exchanges to have equity crowdfunding investors trade their holdings on its platform.

‘‘Although crowdfunding has long been used to support start-up ventures, equity crowdfunding is different as it enables people to become direct shareholders in a venture, ’’ Qadir says,

This is in contrast to traditional crowdfunding services that generally only allow contributors to get new products from the ventures they support for free.

To ensure that the interests of investors are protected, Qadir says prospective companies need to be vetted by its investment committee. Once approved by this committee, a designated Uprise.Africa board member will act as an overseer of investors’ interests in the company.

In exchange for about R24 000, Uprise.Africa will conduct due diligence and organize a 90-day ‘campaign’ to build interest in the company.

Qadir says using crowdsourcing to support start-up businesses is widely seen as a way to drive economic development. The World Bank, for instance, estimates that the global equity crowdfunding sector will be worth more than $93 billion by 2020. 

Without crowdfunding, prospective investors either have to wait for a company to be listed on the JSE or invest at least R100 000 into a venture equity firm’s portfolio to get a stake in emerging businesses. With equity crowdfunding, however, for as little as R1 000, they could get a stake in a company as it is about to enter a fast-growing stage.

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.

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