EVERY1MOBILE Completes $1.7M Angel Investment; Announces 3 Million Monthly Visits Across 6 Sub-Saharan Countries
Every1Mobile (E1M), which specialises in building mass audiences via mobile in sub-Saharan Africa, announced recently that it has raised $1.7m in angel investment.
Every1Mobile, founded in 2010, uses the power of mobile-enabled social networks to transform how organisations engage with young people aged 15-35 in sub-Saharan Africa and other emerging markets. E1M’s ultimate aim is to help young people in emerging markets enter the formal economy. The Company runs nine mobile sites covering Education, Health, Jobs and Entertainment.
The Company already records over 3 million monthly visits to its sites and serves 25 million pages each month. Users are equally split between male and female across South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya and Zimbabwe.
“Mobile social networks in Africa allow us to engage with a vast, previously inaccessible audience of young people,” said Algy Williams, CEO of Every1Mobile. “The mobile phone has the potential to revolutionise access in emerging markets to information services across learning, health, agriculture, financial literacy, business support and sustainable livelihoods.”
By building large mobile-based communities of highly motivated and educated young people who are fast tracking into the formal economy, E1M is becoming the gate-keeper to an audience that is in high demand from third parties such as corporations, governments, foundations and NGOs.
“In a global aid and development market worth $140 billion per annum, mobile provides a new and unique channel for rapid, accurate and measurable delivery of aid and development related products and services direct to the individual,” said Algy Williams. “Fast moving and entrepreneurial companies are well placed to deliver measurable social impact at unprecedented scale.”
The company’s revenues are earned from advertising, sponsorship, market research, and development and social impact services.
E1M has 19 FTE employees working in content production, community management and development, with offices in Cape Town, RSA and Brighton, UK. All E1M’s content and services are optimised for feature phones, essential currently to operate at scale in the region. Its communities range from beSmart (non-curricular learning) to smartSex (sexual health and relationships) to D-Siders (daily text based soap opera) loveWords (poetry and short stories written by users) and Mad4Socca (soccer results, news, forums and fitness). Virtually all E1M content is free to the user.
