Nairobi-based women-focused lifestyle & fashion site Zumi Magazine raised $250,000 to expand into Nigeria & Ghana.
Co-founded by Ex-Rocket Internet executives William McCarren and Sabrina Dorman, Zumi entertainment, lifestyle and love, fashion, beauty and style news to a smartphone enabled, female audience. The site targets 18-35 year old African women.
“We have just closed our second round of seed funding, having successfully raised $250,000 from equity and convertible debt.,” said McCarren in an email update. “We will be expanding into Nigeria and Ghana in the next few months to continue our journey to build the biggest women-focused digital media and e-commerce platform in Africa.”
The raise puts Zumi’s total equity funding to $370k after it raised $120 in August 2016. The raise will help it expand to the two new markets to bring latest news in fashion, beauty, dating, work, health and self-improvement to young women. Zumi is a sort of a Refinery29 on East and West Africa if it really catches up.
Kenya’s Ghafla has also started to shift towards lifestyle from entertainment and gossip but lacks content on women if even its now pan-African. Zumi will also need to be careful and be rooted not to be an all-out entertainment and gossip site.