Our Recent Milestone: An Open Letter by our CEO

Hey Everyone,

First off, we thank every patron and supporter of our business thus far - staff, scout, client or investor. We are sincerely appreciative and dedicate our most recent milestone to you.

As our work intensifies, we’ve been actively improving our tech and talent. To enable this, we successfully raised some investment capital for the business. Even despite some of the delays when we initially started, due to the sudden COVID pandemic, we hit this very pivotal milestone. We are super excited about this phase of growth because it means we get to do more of what we love; serving local and global businesses via access to true marketing intelligence on the different regions in Africa and its many diverse consumers. This was how Forbes covered the news: Africa Rising: How Versus Aims To Help Brands Achieve Their Potential In A New Continent

Versus was built to bridge the data and communication gap that has been very apparent with local and global businesses operating on the continent. To “listen” with precision, we developed the pan-African social listening tool feature, which is designed to understand various unique African languages and the dynamic nature of online, social media or local-based news sources (including micro blogs and forums). This understanding is super important as it helps clients see an accurate picture of African consumers’ sentiments, opinions, feelings, and thoughts about happenings around them -- whether it is about specific brands, industries, or other general current affairs. To “Ask” with precision (and speed), we also developed a way for brands to put relevant questions to their target demographic in key consumer markets in Africa. Our respondents currently span from Nigeria to Kenya and we are set to reach other key markets such as Ghana, South Africa, and Ethiopia as we scale.

Our investment was led by Dan Ventures after it kicked off with Techstars. We also had other private investors from the U.S, parts of Europe and Africa join this pre-seed round. For this round, it was important for us to have investors who saw our trajectory and could also play an integral role in the growth. We’re extremely grateful and lucky to have all of them be involved. 

Especially Techstars. Being part of Techstars is simply amazing. From our Techstars London family (Eamonn, Maja, and Marko) to the other alums that have helped us one way or the other, we can’t thank them enough! The actual experience during our program was definitely one for the books and certainly helped us crystallize the product we have today with Versus. 

Between myself and my fellow founding members, Joshua Tabansi (Product Director) and Robert John (Data Science & Enterprise Officer), we have worked extremely hard to get to this point and of course, alongside our amazing board of Advisors (shout out to Misan, Julie, Feroz and Ankush) to help us navigate up until this phase of the business. The journey so far has resulted in a strong and positive presence in both East and West Africa. Now the plan is to strengthen these relationships we’ve made while expanding into other regions in Africa and in turn help businesses looking to operate in Africa to thrive as well. 

Versus is ultimately focused on making pure African research easier to locate, faster and more affordable to businesses of all sizes and industries. With this goal in mind, rest assured, we are firmly dedicated to broadening and strengthening our reach. We’ve already engaged in some amazing partnerships and have plans to keep expanding our team across key regions in Africa, bringing more able minds and talent on board.

African talent deserves the spotlight -- we are proud African makers. We maintain that businesses also deserve the type of innovation that is designed to close these data gaps while rightfully empowering the African continent and its consumers. Versus exists to also celebrate and preserve our uniqueness as different cultures, languages, and people that exist in this large continent. As we move into our next phase, we hope to help more local and global businesses have success as they navigate the African market.

Africa is Now! 

On behalf of the entire Versus team,

Kemdi Ebi

Co-founder, CEO

Versus Africa

Other key media features about the Versus Africa pre-seed fundraise announcement on Yahoo Finance, Engineering News, IT Online, New Business Ethiopia, Zawya, Investor Kings, News Direct, International Business Times, Market Watch, AP News, AOL, Nasdaq, Star Tribune, Benzinga, KTVN, Market Minute, WICZ, Virtual Strategy Magazine, Daily Herald, Boston Herald, Pan African Visions, Business Traffic, FurtherAfrica, UK News Group or MidlandsTV