StarNews Mobile, Africa’s fastest-growing mobile content platform, has announced that it has received its initial investment funding from Investors & Partners (I&P), a pioneering impact investment group entirely dedicated to startups and medium-sized enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Expert DOJO, an international accelerator based in Santa Monica, California.
StarNews completed its first investment campaign with I&P, and more specifically, the I&P Afrique Entrepreneurs 2 (IPAE2) fund.
The IPAE2 launched at the end of 2017 to support the emergence of a new generation of responsible African businesses.
StarNews was selected by IPAE2 investors due to its unique and relevant position in a booming content market and for its strong impact to promote African talents.
“We are proud to support a talented and experienced African entrepreneur who demonstrates a real commitment to deploy a pan-African solution and innovation,” stated I&P investment manager Nouss Bih.
“We share StarNews’s ambition to promote African artists and produce a greater diversity of quality local content, with high added value for end-users.”
The sentiment is shared by Brian Mac Mahon, founder of Expert DOJO, a pre-seed startup accelerator.
Expert DOJO improves the success rate of early-stage entrepreneurs supporting them with investment and aiding the development of their foundation, influence, community, branding, marketing, communication and mindset.
“When it came to StarNews’ value proposition, strong local partnerships in Africa and their focus on customer satisfaction there was no investment decision to make,” stated Mac Mahon.
“If we could have, we would have invested more and since that time we have been more and more impressed with how the company has over delivered on every milestone and investor promise.
“This is one of the companies that we are proudest to have in our portfolio and expect great things over the next two years. Founder, Guy Kamgaing, is destined for greatness.”
StarNews launched in the Ivory Coast in 2017. The company positions itself in Africa’s mobile video market which holds massive potential to reach its 400M and growing user base of underserved fans and undiscovered talent.
StarNews is an opportunity for any content creator to target hard to reach audiences and create a sustainable new income source by connecting brands and celebrities with millions of young, eager fans across the continent.
The StarNews network provides a springboard and a spotlight for new and emerging content creators from Africa and around the world.
StarNews is founded by Guy Kamgaing, a Cameroonian entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in the mobile telecom industry.
Kamgaing realized that the African mobile market is now one of the fastest-growing in the world; however, a large majority of African consumers do not have access to relevant video content due to a lack of services tailored to local markets.
“Despite the generalization of smartphones and increasing access on the mobile internet, value-added service offers are not very ‘Africanized’ and even when it is, the content is sourced only from international players,” states Kamgaing.
“It was necessary to highlight this rich and original local content and allow its players to monetize it as it should be. Hence the idea of a distribution platform deployed in partnership with mobile operators.”
Today, StarNews is available in the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Congo and South Africa and will be launching in Nigeria, Senegal, and other countries.
StarNews has established partnerships with large pan-African mobile operators such as MTN, Orange, and MOOV in order to distribute exclusive and quality video content directly to users.
