Nigerian Pan-African Data and intelligence company that provides subscription-based data and insight on Africa to global businesses and professionals, Stears, has closed a seed round of $3.3 million.
The seed round was led by MaC Venture Capital with participation from Serena Ventures, Melo 7 Tech Partners, Omidyar Group’s Luminate Fund, Cascador, and Hoaq Club.
Last month, Stears was one of the 60 startups to be accepted into the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund 2022 cohort, which included some non-dilutive funding.
With a mission to become the world’s most trusted source of African data, insight, and data collection tools for businesses, financial and policy platform, Stears plans to use this seed to enhance its data collection and analytics capabilities, talent acquisition, and expansion to East and Southern Africa.
Speaking on the recent funds raised, Stears CEO Preston Ideh said “We know global professionals need our data and insight because banks, research firms, development organizations, and investors are already using our early products. Our customers tell us we are building a ‘systemically important’ company to address Africa’s data problem”.
“Globally, information providers like Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters have built data powerhouses that act as information gateways to Western markets.
“We are executing an African version of this model, focused on the often missing, outdated, or poorly digitized African datasets needed by operators, finance and policy professionals, researchers, and even regulators.”
Stears started as a media publication that was focused on financial news and insights in Nigeria. In a bid to support its transition from an insights company to a data company and buoyed by this seed round closed, Stears is planning a strategy modification for its Pro product.
The Pro product will provide more bespoke content around specific issues such as country analysis, market-entry, and digital economy for international organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme, the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, and the knowledge workers.
It should be recalled that on April 29, 2020 Investors King reported that Stears raised $600,000 in seed funding to solve the information gap by making it easy for anyone to access high-quality information.