Congo Based Startup Jambo Raises $7.5 Million in Seed Funding Round

A Congo-based Web3 app developer, Jambo, recently said it raised $7.5 million in a seed funding round. According to a report, the startup’s successful seed round is the latest by an Africa-based firm that is working towards developing Web3.

Startup’s Partnership With Social Media Companies

Jambo, the Congo-based developer of a Web3 app, has raised $7.5 million in seed funding, a report has said. Parties that participated in the funding include Coinbase Ventures, Three Arrows Capital, Alameda Research, Tiger Global, Delphi Ventures, Alliance DAO, Defiance Capital, Yield Guild Games, and Polygon Studios.

The startup, which was co-founded in November 2021 by current CEO James Zhang and his sister, aims to replicate the success of Web3 projects in Africa. To achieve this, the CEO said Jambo will partner with a telecoms provider and social media companies. He also said:

The reason we can do that is via partnerships with these companies as we tokenize a part of their advertising budget and directly provide to the end-user. Many web2 incumbents or even web3 are having a $100-200 user acquisition costs so we can lower that by order of magnitude by directly incentivizing the end-user.

Still, unlike other startups’ business models, Jambo doesn’t plan on taking a cut from user earnings, the report added. Instead, the startup’s revenues are expected to come from advertising and from commissions earned selling airtime and data.

Conditions Favor Play-to-Earn Models

Reports of Jambo’s capital raise come just over a month after another Web3-focused African startup, Nestcoin, was reported to have raised $6.4 million from investors. Meanwhile, a Techcrunch report states that both startups’ successful funding rounds suggest that Africa is set to follow in Southeast Asia’s footsteps.

To back this assertion, the report cites the African continent’s combination of a fast-growing population, high smartphone penetration, and the growing adoption of crypto as positives that favor the adoption of crypto and play-to-earn models.

On the other hand, negatives such as the low Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and the continent’s perennial problem of high unemployment are listed as factors that make Africa an ideal place to launch Web3 projects.

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Terence Zimwara

Terence Zimwara is a Zimbabwe award-winning journalist, author and writer. He has written extensively about the economic troubles of some African countries as well as how digital currencies can provide Africans with an escape route.