Nigeria’s Eden Life secures $1.4 m Seed Round for Africa’s first Home services app.

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Eden Life, Africa’s first home services app for scheduling food, laundry, and cleaning services, has raised $1.4 million in a seed round led by LocalGlobe in the United Kingdom, with participation from Samurai Incubate, Future Africa, Village Global, Rising Tide Africa, and Enza Capital. Following pre-seed funding from all of Andela’s original co-founders and additional accelerator support over the last 18 months, Eden Life’s total investment in the company has now reached $2 million. The new funds will be used to expand Eden Life’s in-house technology and develop its own world-class kitchens and operations hubs as it develops a new tech-based platform to help Africa’s service industry improve and grow.

Eden Life was developed for busy Lagos professionals who are often time-poor due to long working hours and struggle to source and coordinate dependable, efficient, and trustworthy home services providers. It was launched in 2019 by three former Andelans and dubbed “the concierge of comfort.” The app, which is available on Google Play and the App Store, provides users with a subscription service that includes chef-prepared meals, laundry service, and home cleaning, as well as the ability to track the progress of all of their services.

Users can subscribe for one or more of the services and choose how often they want them delivered. The average Eden Life user currently uses two services five times per week, with first-time users often starting with food delivery before moving on to other services. Eden Life, which is aimed at executives, remote workers, creatives, and tech engineers and developers, is removing the barriers to finding reliable household services in the city, and has already attracted 600+ customers and is rapidly growing a loyal following, with a 92% monthly retention rate and over 70% of new users coming from referrals.

Eden Life’s proprietary technology platform allows the consumers to provide continuous input on all aspects of service, with data being used to build preferences and provide suggestions based on user feedback. The chores are then managed by “Gardeners” – the human side of Eden Life – trained professionals who work with Eden Life service providers and end users to provide a seamless service, and the app also features delivery time tracking, payments and billing, and user alerts. Since its launch, Eden Life has delivered over 60,000 services thanks to its robust architecture.

“For many of our users, if they’re cooking or running errands, they’re not being productive; they don’t want distractions from their work, which is where Eden Life comes in,” said Nadayar Enegesi, Co-Founder at Eden Life and Co-founder at Andela. “We understand this scenario all too well. We are those people – so we basically designed a product with us in mind and realised that collectively, we are a pretty large market in Nigeria and have subsequently scaled Eden with other professionals from all walks of life who need simple tasks done with no fuss.”

Enegesi continued: “While we can’t create more time physically, we are offering access to a platform that delivers a seamless mix of household services, so that busy professionals can focus on their work and leisure. We’re excited to scale our platform to offer so much more, and continue to offer some of the highest quality services underpinned by world-class technology and a highly trained team of professionals.”

Eden will be able to own and manage its entire supply chain and deliver its services without the need for third-party providers thanks to a physical footprint where chefs prepare meals, laundry can be processed quickly, and cleaners are trained to provide a high-quality service, thanks to a vertical integration strategy fueled by the seed funding. Eden Life will be rolling out many more services over the coming months to make the app a one-stop solution for managing household duties and personal life, having debuted with three core services – those most necessary to making the home a sanctuary.

“We fell in love with Eden Life’s vision for the future of home services in Africa. A true customer obsession sits at the heart of everything they are building – this is already visible in customer retention and other key metrics,” said Remus Brett, General Partner at LocalGlobe. “As investors, we are always attracted to first-mover companies that launch products in untapped markets. The combination of this advantage with a core team who has proven experience building African tech to unrivalled levels sets Eden Life on an exciting path of growth.”

Africa is projected to have 100 cities with a population of over one million people by 2025, making it the world’s fastest urbanising continent. Africa also has the fastest-growing middle class, with rapidly increasing spending power, owing to the rapidly growing IT sector. Eden hopes to revolutionize the home services market by making life easier for the chronically time-poor tech-native professionals and executives, allowing them to channel their time into more productive pursuits while also affording them more quality leisure time, as more people work long hours.

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