StarNews Mobile, An Africa-focused mobile content platform has received its initial investment funding to launch in Nigeria, Senegal and other African markets.
The investment was led by Investors & Partners (I&P), from its I&P Afrique Entrepreneurs 2 (IPAE2) fund and and Expert DOJO, an international accelerator based in Santa Monica, Calif.
“We are proud to support a talented and experienced African entrepreneur who demonstrates a real commitment to deploy a pan-African solution and innovation,” stated I&P investment manager Nouss Bih. “We share StarNews’s ambition to promote African artists and produce a greater diversity of quality local content, with high added value for end-users.”
StarNews launched in the Ivory Coast in 2017 and expects to reach Africa’s mobile video market which holds massive potential to reach its 400M and growing user base of underserved fans and undiscovered talent.
StarNews, is an opportunity for any content creator to target hard to reach audiences and create a sustainable new income source by connecting brands and celebrities with millions of young, eager fans across the continent.
The StarNews network provides a springboard and a spotlight for new and emerging content creators from Africa and around the world.
StarNews is founded by Guy Kamgaing, a Cameroonian entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in the mobile telecom industry. Kamgaing realized that the African mobile market is now one of the fastest-growing in the world; however, a large majority of African consumers do not have access to relevant video content due to a lack in services tailored to local markets.
“Despite the generalization of smartphones and increasing access on the mobile internet, value-added service offers are not very ‘Africanized’ and even when it is, the content is sourced only from international players,” states Kamgaing. “It was necessary to highlight this rich and original local content and allow its players to monetize it like it should be. Hence the idea of a distribution platform deployed in partnership with mobile operators.”
Available in Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Congo and South Africa, StarNews will be launching in Nigeria, Senegal and other countries. The firm is working with large pan-African mobile operators such as MTN, Orange and MOOV in order to distribute exclusive and quality video content directly to users.
“When it came to StarNews’ value proposition, strong local partnerships in Africa and their focus on customer satisfaction there was no investment decision to make,” stated Mac Mahon founder of Expert DOJO, a pre-seed startup accelerator. “If we could have, we would have invested more and since that time we have been more and more impressed with how the company has over delivered on every milestone and investor promise. This is one of the companies that we are proudest to have in our portfolio and expect great things over the next two years. Founder, Guy Kamgaing, is destined for greatness.”
