General classifieds startup Afrimalin with a similar Craigslist model has successfully raised €400K in only 3 days just less than a month after its launch to connect buyers to sellers in Francophone Africa.
The record was led by the Milchior family, owner of the French group Etam, David Kalfon of Amaika Asset Management, a French investment fund and investor Yannick Naud in London.The firm says it was actually forced to decline key offers from potential investors, once the fund raising goal was reached.
According to Mamadou Niane, Afrimalin’s co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, “We rapidly raised a significant amount of capital with key investors. It proves the market’s confidence in our solution and strategy.”
Apart from building its mobile app, the firm is likely to use this cash to invest in more marketing both offline and online and get the best talent in this markets to grow and consolidate before a huge scramble for the region starts. Because there is need for online marketplaces like these, the work might not be as hard.
When it launched in September, the firm said it was targeting SMEs, merchants and artisans and local buyers and sellers and professional service providers in Francophone Africa-markets. The site is now live in 8 countries- Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mali, Republic of Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo and Senegal, a market of over 200 million people and 26 million Internet users.