Stears raises $3.3 million in seed funding to expand across Africa

Nigerian data and intelligence company, Stears has announced a $3.3 million seed round led by MaC Venture Capital.

• The company will use this fresh fund to enhance its data collection and analytics capabilities, increase its workforce, and expand across Africa by setting up bases in Kenya, South Africa and Egypt.
• This news is coming two years after Stears raised $650,000 in pre-seed funding. Last month, Stears was selected as one of the 60 startups to get into the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund 2022 cohort, which included some non-dilutive funding and cloud credits.
• Stears started out as a media publication focused on financial news and insights in Nigeria. Its products include Stears Premium, Stears Pro and Stears Advisory. The company says its userbase has grown mainly organically at around 6.5% month-on-month, doubling its total number of users over the last year.
• Going forward, the startup plans to modify its Pro product by working with international development institutions and financial institutions to produce proprietary and exclusive datasets that don’t exist anywhere else.
• Therefore, instead of reporting insights from the data it sources, Stears wants to collate data, engage in deep data analytics and present it to its business customers in various formats.
• Serena Ventures, Omidyar Group’s Luminate Fund, Melo 7 Tech Partners and Cascador (Empowering Economic Growth Foundation) participated in the funding round.