Francophone African super app Gozem grabs $5M to expand and offer more services

Francophone African super app Gozem grabs $5M to expand and offer more services

In a statement to TechCrunch, Gozem, a super app that provides a variety of services in Francophone Africa — such as transportation, e-commerce, and financial services — announced that it has raised $5 million in Series A funding, according to the company.

All of the major investors in the Togo and Singapore-based company, including AAIC, Thunes (TransferTo), Momentum Ventures (SMRT), Innoport Ventures (Schulte Group), CMC Ventures (National Express), and Liil Ventures, have made investments in the company (Mobility ADO).

After a previous seed round of $7 million, which was raised in three tranches from investors including Plug and Play Ventures in the United States, Launch Africa, BANSEA, and Virtual Network, the company has raised a new round of funding. In total, more than $12 million has been raised through the multi-vertical application.

Gozem was established by Gregory Costamagna, Raphael Dana, and Emeka Ajene. In 2018, the startup began operating in Togo as a motorcycle ride hailing service, which it continued in 2019.

Going forward, Gozem plans to expand its transportation verticals to include taxi and tricycle services in multiple cities across Togo and Benin as part of a strategy to replicate the Grab and Gojek models in the Southeast Asian market.

As the pandemic spread, the platform's geographic expansion was halted and the platform's vertical expansion was initiated. It was the first company to offer e-commerce and logistics services, allowing merchants to list products that customers wanted and have them delivered by its drivers.

A lease-to-own model for vehicles and associated equipment was then implemented by the company, allowing drivers to obtain asset financing.

During a conference call with the founders, Costamagna, the chairman, stated that the three verticals work together to increase drivers' disposable income by increasing their earnings. Essentially, Gozem's business model is to create a win-win situation in which its drivers become the next middle-class population in Francophone Africa while also executing flawlessly on its super app plans.

In order to do so, people [merchants, suppliers, and businesses] who are interested in working with them [riders] will work diligently and provide a variety of services to our customer base," he explained.

"And, in doing so, we increase their disposable income by sending them more passengers and more delivery trips, by expanding the number of merchants on our platform, and by identifying businesses that are interested in using delivery services," says a company representative. Additionally, we lower their operating costs through asset financing because they do not have a formal alternative, which is typically informal and expensive," says the author.

Gozem has provided drivers with up to 1,500 vehicles since it first began offering the lease model. A statement from Costamagna stated that the funding will assist Gozem in its goal of increasing its workforce to more than 200,000 by 2025.

Going forward, the founders of Gozem say that the company will concentrate on providing digital banking services and lending to its users in the 13 cities where it currently operates and in the countries of Gabon and Cameroon where it has expanded.

Another African super app company, Nigeria's OPay (which has since shelved its super app plans in order to focus on its financial services arm), and another, more recent, African super app company, SafeBoda have all followed this model in their respective countries. Other players, such as Yassir, which is primarily focused on the North African market, are also experimenting with banking and payment services in the region.

Gozem intends to use its existing network of marketplace users (drivers and merchants) to act as agents in each city where it operates, leveraging the company's existing network of marketplace users (drivers and merchants). It is possible for individual users to exchange cash for mobile money in this manner through the Gozem app.

"I believe we have a significant competitive advantage. In general, our competitors are telecommunications companies that provide mobile money services, as well as standalone digital wallets on occasion," Costamagna explained. Our goal is to provide an integrated wallet solution that can be used in conjunction with a variety of other services. Consequently, the following is the critical point of differentiation in the market:

The emergence of Francophone Africa's first unicorn in the form of fintech startup Wave, which shed light on the market's abundance of opportunities, signaled that the region had been largely excluded from the tech and startup disruption that had swept through other African regions, most notably the Nigerian, Kenyan, South African, and Egyptian economies. Gozem was founded precisely for this reason, according to the company's founders, who explained their decision.

"Nearly 95 percent of the money and attention are always directed toward four or five African countries... "Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt," Dana stated. "Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt" are the countries that receive the most attention and money. "However, Francophone Africa is frequently overlooked when it comes to gaining significant traction. In Francophone as a desirable market, this is where we've identified the most significant opportunities," says the company.

Dana and Costamagna had already established businesses in Singapore prior to the establishment of Gozem, and they brought Ajene on board to add African expertise to a team that already possessed extensive knowledge of the Southeast Asian market.

With the addition of three years, Gozem now employs 250 people in four markets. Using the Series A financing, the company plans to expand into additional Francophone African countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast, among other places. Additionally, the company intends to improve its asset financing model at the same time that it launches its financial services.

"The African markets in which we operate are referred to as second-tier African markets by some observers. We, on the other hand, believe in the model that we are pursuing. Across all of our verticals, we've discussed how it's really a free-for-all in areas where there is less competition. Ajene explained that while the company currently operates in four countries, the company hopes to establish a regional presence within the next year."