Talk360, a South African Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) firm, raised an extra $3 million months after the initial close of its seed round, bringing the total investment raised in the round to $7 million.
Allan Gray E2 Ventures (AGEV), Kalon Venture Partners, E4E Africa, Endeavor, current lead investor HAVAC, and a number of angel investors, including Tjaart van der Walt and Coenraad Jonker, are among the most recent investors in Talk360.
How Talk360 Intends To Use This Funding
The business intends to use the fresh capital to expand its VoIP market share and introduce a pan-African payment platform the following year. Talk360’s payment platform will incorporate “all payment alternatives” available on the continent, resulting in a wide range of localized payment options that will make it simple for both local and foreign companies to sell to African customers.
“The new platform will allow users across the continent to buy products and services using any currency and more than 160 payment methods. It will also be opened to other merchants,” Talk360 said in a statement.
Read: Partment raises $1.5 million in pre-seed funding round
In a previous interview, Talk360 stated that the difficulties it had integrating digital payment methods, which had an impact on the profitability of its internet calling company, led to its decision to become a payment aggregator.
The startup’s co-founder and managing director for Africa, Dean Hiine, said that while there are a variety of digital payment options available in Africa, some of them need drawn-out and difficult procedures that lower conversion rates.
Hiine, who launched the company in 2016 alongside Hans Osnabrugge and Jorne Schamp, intends to use the payment platform to expand the number of people in the continent who can use its app to make international calls. Users of Talk360 can place paid calls using a platform that just requires a smartphone, an app, and internet access for the caller.
“Our mission is to bridge distance and connect lives by offering reliable, affordable and easy-to-use digital services, delivered in a localised manner to all communities, particularly emerging countries, so they can connect to the world,” said Hiine.
Additionally, the firm has a network of agents that allow customers to buy airtime vouchers at more than 750,000 physical points of sale, including PesaPoint in Kenya and Flash in South Africa.
“But we’re not just solving socio-economic issues: We’re also offering micro-entrepreneurship and income-generating opportunities to our growing network of agents across the country.”
According to the business, its internet calling software has already connected 2.3 million individuals worldwide this year, and it has seen a 167% increase in clients and a 130% increase in income. More than 170 nations, including South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Bangladesh, have active users of the app.
“We invested more into Talk360 based on its strong progress in the South African market to date, as well as its potential in the rest of Africa. Since our first investment, the company has shown spectacular growth, and a genuine ability to crack the challenge of distribution in Africa. We’ve seen the company convert users to paying customers by offering them relevant services, and making this accessible in an easy, affordable, reliable and trustworthy way,” said HAVAÍC Managing Partner Ian Lessem.
The Startup also raises $4M to Build a Single Payment Platform for Africa
Establishing payment systems that are suitable for each country they enter is a hurdle faced by many organizations trying to launch pan-African operations. The majority of payment service providers operating on the continent offer solutions that are restricted to particular geographical areas, necessitating the signing of contracts with numerous providers in order to respond to the distinct tastes of their users in other nations. Talk360 is working to close this gap as it develops a new payment platform that will incorporate all accepted payment methods in Africa. It claims that this solution will give businesses access to the widest selection of locally tailored payment choices in Africa.
After concluding a $4 million early funding round led by HAVAC, the firm is also hoping to extend its international calling operations across Africa. A number of angel investors, including Gabriel de Montessuss (President of WorldPay International), Robert Kraal, Gaston Aussems (ex-Mollie), Marnix van der Ploeg (ex-Booking.com and EQT), and 4Di Capital also invested in the round.
Talk360 co-founder and managing director for Africa Dean Hiine told TechCrunch that he expects great growth for the company’s payment platform, which he says will also make it simple for foreign retailers to sell to users in Africa. Hiine also predicted that the calling industry in Africa will continue to grow.
The firm now operates through partnerships with more established payment service providers, which are significantly constrained by region-specificity. According to Hiine, his new platform will unify all of Africa’s “scattered payment methods” under one roof. He predicts that this will have a positive financial impact on Talk360 as well as other merchants who choose to use the platform.
For example, Talk360, a top Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider in Africa, offers its users the ability to make international calls through its app for a fee. The app is designed in such a way that calling only requires the initiator to have a smartphone, access to the internet, and the Talk360 app.
“In our calling business, we identified some unique problems around digital payment in Africa.” The payment methods are scattered and the payment processes are lengthy. And we could see that this problem had a serious impact on our bottom line in terms of the conversion rate we were seeing in Africa… “It is a problem we experienced and we are trying to solve for other merchants with a presence on the continent too, by making the process fast and easy,” said Hiine.
“We are building the platform to actually increase our conversion rate by giving the user experience one single checkout, and to some level, offer predictive analysis—to tell the preferred methods of payment for that region and offer them as top options for the user,” said Hiine, also Brooklyn Ventures Africa co-founder, a VC firm that has invested in startups in technology, media, and oil and gas sectors.
This funding should be properly utilized in the expansion of the Talk360 brand to other cities in the country. Recently, they’ve been complaints by clients using Talk360 about network issues. This funding raised should be able to touch areas where they had difficulties.