Every1Mobile closes R18m angel round, announces 3 million monthly visits

Every1Mobile (E1M), the company that specialises in building mass audiences via mobile in sub-Saharan Africa, announced that it has raised R18-million in angel investment.

The company that runs its core operations from Cape Town, operates nine mobile sites covering education, health, jobs and entertainment aimed at the 15 to 35 age group.

E1M, headquartered in the UK was founded in 2010. It uses the power of its mobile-enabled social networks to attract organisations that would like to target sub-Saharan Africa’s younger demographic.

E1M claims a usage statistics of 3 million monthly visits to its sites and says that it serves 25 million pages each month, in regions such as South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya and Zimbabwe.

“Mobile social networks in Africa allow us to engage with a vast, previously inaccessible audience of young people,” said Algy Williams, CEO of Every1Mobile. “The mobile phone has the potential to revolutionise access in emerging markets to information services across learning, health, agriculture, financial literacy, business support and sustainable livelihoods.”

E1M says that its higher purpose is to educate in a fun way — by bringing together content, products and services that the youth need most to help them “fast track into the formal economy.” By building large mobile-based communities of highly motivated and educated young people who are fast tracking into the formal economy, E1M hopes to become a type of gate-keeper to an audience that is in high demand from the likes of corporations, governments, foundations and NGOs.

“In a global aid and development market worth US$140 billion per annum, mobile provides a new and unique channel for rapid, accurate and measurable delivery of aid and development related products and services direct to the individual,” said Algy Williams. “Fast moving and entrepreneurial companies are well placed to deliver measurable social impact at unprecedented scale.”

The company’s revenues are earned from advertising, sponsorship, market research, and development and social impact services.

E1M has 19 FTE employees working in content production, community management and development, with offices in Cape Town, RSA and Brighton, UK. All E1M’s content and services are optimised for feature phones — essential currently to operate at scale in the region. Its communities range from beSmart (non-curricular learning) to smartSex (sexual health and relationships) to D-Siders (daily text-based soap opera) loveWords (poetry and short stories written by users) and Mad4Socca (soccer results, news, forums and fitness). Most of E1M’s content is free to the user.