Two African Startups make it to Gray Matters Capital Calibrator program
Two African startups, Kenya’s MumsVillage and Sierra Leone’s Mosabi have made it to the second cohort of Gray Matters Capital’s Calibrator program – GMC Calibrator.
The GMC Calibrator is a Digital Self-learning to Earning Accelerator launched by Gray Matters Capital in April 2018 with an aim to make the mobile phone a device to promote ‘Self Learning to Earning’ by improving user engagement, monetization and optimization of mobile learning platforms. This is done by understanding and implementing the principles of behavioural science and data-driven decision making.
The two African startups will join seven other start-ups from India and Vietnam in the March 2019 cohort.
“From an engagement point of view, we saw impact on the lines of 30% increase in monthly retention and 20% increase in revenue for every member of the first cohort we ran from June to December 2018. Three companies of the cohort raised funding during the 6 month engagement while two made it to Google Launchpad and Reliance’s Jio GenNext Accelerator. We are confident of calibrating more such success stories with our March 2019 cohort”, said Omkar Kulkarni, Program Head, GMC Calibrator.
Speaking about the selection of the African start-ups for the program, he said, “We are excited to welcome Mosabi and Mums Village on-board. Africa is an important market for us at Gray Matters Capital and we are strategically looking to nurture those start-ups, which can create gendered impact with their mobile solutions through our program.”
Gray Matters Capital makes sector agnostic investments globally through its gender lens portfolio – coLABS in enterprises whose products and services benefit women and girls at scale. It has made 3 investments in Africa – Rwanda based African Renewable Energy Distributer (2017), Ghana based Redbird Health Tech (2018) and Nigeria based Sonocare (2019).
In India, it funds education and skilling enterprises working to improve access to affordable quality education and employability with its edLABS initiative.
Mosabi, which produces localized animated content focused on financial inclusion for the underserved and connects them to financial service providers (FSPs) through its Android app designed for low-bandwidth settings, operates in Sierra Leone, Ghana, Kenya and Liberia, and is currently launching in Senegal. Nairobi based Mums Village on the other hand is an online platform created as a home for Kenyan mothers to freely express themselves among a community of doulas, doctors, nutritionists, fitness experts and fellow parents; besides accessing resources, relevant, and localized information, products, and services for pregnant women and mothers in Africa.
Other than Mosabi and Mums Village, the Cohort of March 2019 of the GMC Caliobrator includes Edmicro from Vietnam and six Indian start-ups –Dcoder, InnerHour, Lal10, Matrubharti, Quest Alliance and Skipy.
Behavioural architecture firm Final Mile and Mobile network optimization specialists Fastah are the knowledge partners of the program, with Indian Angel Network as investment partner and Amazon’s AWS Activate as Technology partner. CL Educate is the user testing partner for the GMC Calibrator.
Gray Matters Capital, is a US-based impact investor focused on the funding for-profit social enterprises in Africa, India, Latin America, USA and South East Asia.
