South African tech startup Qwili raises $1.2m in seed funding
- ByStartupStory | August 1, 2022
Qwili, a hybrid tech startup and South African point-of-sale hardware, has raised $1.2 million in a seed funding round led by an entrepreneur-centric VC firm, E4E Africa with participation from Strat-Tech, Next Chymia, and Untapped Global among other and angel investors. The startup will use its funding to expand its team, as well as boost its product development to introduce more offerings
According to the State of Startup Funding – H1 2022 Emerging Venture Markets Report, the African ecosystem crossed the $2Bn milestone in H1, being the only EVM to exceed 50% of all transactions last year. In Early-Stage (Pre-SEED to Pre-Series A) funding dynamic of the startup has been strong, with rounds as high as $32.8M recorded by Kenya-based FinTech Dash and Mara ($23M), with global and regional investors joining together to back creative tech solutions for the African area.
Co-founder and CEO of Qwili, Luyolo Sijake said, “We are passionate about expanding access to digital goods and services. Achieving this does not only lie in new innovations and technologies, but also applying existing tech in appropriate ways that reach and benefit more people,”
In addition to supporting Qwili’s existing impact, the raise has allowed for a critical expansion of the Qwili team and its development capabilities, the introduction of new product offerings, and a greater focus on research and development in the hardware component of the business.
“We believe that Qwili is both highly scalable and high impact. Qwili agents love the entrepreneurial opportunity that Qwili provides them, while giving their community access to e-commerce and to fairly priced goods and services,” said Bastiaan Hochstenbach, co-founder and managing partner at E4E Africa.
ABOUT QWILI
Qwili, a Cape Town based startup founded in 2019 by handwefika Radebe and Luyolo Sijake, offers a near-field communication or NFC-enabled smartphone and digital sales solution by turning users’ phones into POS devices to enable them to sell more services, according to MAGNiTT.
Follow Startup Story
Related Posts
