Stears, Nigerian Data Startup Raises a $3.3 Million Seed Round for Growth
Stears, a Nigerian data startup, has completed a $3.3 million seed round in order to grow throughout other African nations.
Leading the round was MaC Venture Capital. Additionally participating were Serena Ventures, the Luminate Fund of the Omidyar Group, Melo 7 Tech Partners, and Cascador.
One of the 60 companies chosen for the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund 2022 batch in September 2022, Stears, intends to use the cash to further its data collection and analysis.
In order to address Nigeria’s shortage of knowledge and data-driven insights, Preston Ideh, Bode Ogunlana, Abdul Abdulrahim, and Michael Famoroti launched Stears in 2017.
The business began as a Nigerian media outlet for financial news and commentary. Now, though, it wants to focus on data in Africa.
Through a variety of content genres, including news, opinion, investigative pieces, and deep dives, its flagship subscription insights product, Stears Premium, educates the general public on subjects pertaining to business and finance, economics, government, and policy in Nigeria.
Because of the iteration of Stears Premium and the introduction of new products, Stears Pro and Stears Advisory, Stears has developed into a data and intelligence company.
The composition of Stears Premium is influenced by macrotrends and problems like inflation and gross domestic product. Stears Pro is affected by distinct issues like market access, country analysis, and the digital economy.
As Stears focuses more on Pro and Premium, it will suspend Stears Advisory, the product where the business serves as a consultant and undertakes outside projects connected to its core coverage.
Ideh asserts that the product is unscalable and generates insufficient recurring revenue for venture-backed businesses.
According to Ideh, the business would work with international development organizations and financial institutions to produce statistics that are exclusive to them.
In addition to just providing insights from the data it gets, Stears intends to gather data, perform deep data analytics, and make it available to its corporate customers in a variety of ways.
The investment will also be used by the business to hire sector analysts, data analysts, and data scientists.
