DigsConnect, South African Student Housing Startup Completes Pre-series A Funding Round

DigsConnect, a South African digital student housing platform, has closed a pre-Series A round of funding to drive its global expansion with a focus on assisting African students in the UK and US acquire more reasonably priced, practical, and secure housing.

The DigsConnect website, developed by Alexandria Procter and Greg Ramsay-Keal, enables landlords, estate agents, and property managers to publish their property listings. Students can then browse and sift through these postings to find housing that meets their needs as well as roommates.

The startup, which raised ZAR12 million (then US$830,000) in March 2019 and received a ZAR3 million (US$200,000) grant from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation last year, recently signed an agreement with Student.com, the largest student housing marketplace in the world, allowing it to expand its presence to about 30 new countries and 400 new cities. Its site currently lists more than 1.3 million beds, and it is growing its operations into the US, UK, Singapore, and Europe.

DigsConnect recently acquired pre-Series A funding from Launch Africa Ventures, Goodwater Capital, Five35 Ventures, and Delta Ventures, which has given that expansion a push. The firm will be able to scale its international operations and dramatically accelerate its expansion strategy thanks to this group of investors.

The fact that we obtained such strong early backing from top-notch pan-African and US investors, according to Procter, “speaks volumes about the strength of the team, the importance of our strategic collaboration with Student.com, our plan of early profitability, and great unit economics.”

DigsConnect’s revenue traction, clever customer and inventory acquisition techniques, excellent founding team, and sizable total addressable market (TAM) in student housing, according to Zachariah George, general partner at Launch Africa Ventures, appealed to his organization.

In order to improve university students around the world, he stated, “this investment gives fascinating portfolio linkage to several of our 115 portfolio companies.”