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 $1.1M seed funding was from 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.
Founded by Jesse Arhin Ghansah, Prince Boakye Boampong and Dominic Mensah, OMG will use this investment to dominate the social feeds of millennials across the continent. The firm aims to set up office in Accra, Lagos and Nairobi and also grow its advertising and marketing operations and produce more video content.
In a statement, OMG Digital Co-Founder Jesse Arhin Ghansah said “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”.
Dubbed the ‘Buzzfeed of Africa’ with its OMGVoice brand, the firm has a 25-person team with teams in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya with a 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.
OMG Voice creates and curates listicles, pictorials, videos and memes tailored to specific African countries and cultures where there is an estimated 250 million+ millennials, more than a third of the continent’s population and the most connected and social generation with 90% of OMG’s subscribers visiting the site android mobile devices.
“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,” said Kai Bond, Head of Investing at Comcast’s Catalyst Fund.
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. OMG’s clients include Safaricom, Coca Cola, Huawei, KFC and Philips, Pringles.
“Global brands now understand the growth metrics Africa presents them, yet they may not quite understand how to actually connect with this new audience, which is where we come in. We know our audiences, what they love, hate and aspire to – how they react to and engage with online media; so we are currently working with some genuinely forward-thinking brands to produce nuanced, smart and engaging sponsored content that resonates with our different communities. Our aim is to be in the newsfeed of every user on the continent through an OMG Digital brand in the future,” Ghansah concluded.