Dubbed as the Buzzfeed for Africa, Y-Combinator – backed Ghanaian new media startup OMG Digital has raised a $1.1M seed funding to dominate the social feeds of millennials across the continent by setting up company offices in Accra, Lagos and Nairobi, growing their advertising and marketing operations and investing in producing more video content.
The investment was led by international investors Kima Ventures, Soma Capital, Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund, Social Capital, M&Y Growth Partners, and Macro Ventures, with participation from a number of Angel Investors including Josh Buckley of Mino Games, and Founder of Off-Grid Electric, Francis Xavier Helgesen.
According to OMG Digital Co-Founder Jesse Arhin Ghansah, “We’re not creating content solely for a homogenous ‘African’. We develop specific content strategies for producing locally relevant material for Africa’s diverse audiences; working hard to ensure that our content is available to millennials regardless of what platform they may be on. Through this, we have managed to build not only one of the biggest audiences in Africa, but also attract some of the biggest consumer brands on the continent and around the world”.
Targeting Africa’s millennial population-who make up more than a third of the continent’s population-through shareable and hyper-local pop-culture content, OMG Digital has been dubbed the ‘Buzzfeed of Africa’ with its OMGVoice brand and has monthly aggregated content views of over 90 million, a monthly social reach of 80 million, with 4.5 million readers to the website each month since its launch in February 2016. It’s competition in Nigeria include Zikoko and Ghafla in Kenya.
Currently operating in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya, the 25-strong team, create and curate listicles, pictorials, videos and memes that are tailored to specific African countries and cultures. Reflecting the diverse interests of the 250 million+ African millennials on the continent.
The online platform also produces video content focused on culture and hyper-local recipes via their culinary brand, Servepot, and is on the verge of launching two new verticals focused on lifestyle and technology.
Founded by Jesse Arhin Ghansah, Prince Boakye Boampong and Dominic Mensah, OMG Digital’s online platforms are fast gaining a digital marketing and advertising presence, built on sponsored and native content, giving brands the opportunity to reach audiences through articles, videos, quizzes and other content. Some of their clients include Coca Cola, Huawei, KFC and Philips and Pringles.
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On why they chose to invest in OMG Digital Kai Bond, Head of Investing at Comcast’s Catalyst Fund says “OMG Digital have created a truly unique publishing brand through their deep understanding of Africa’s exploding digital media space. Catalyst Fund looks forward to helping this team continue to grow as they scale on such a super-diverse continent.”
