Asoko Insight Secures $1.35m Seed Funding for Rollout

Asoko Insight, the leading-edge provider of corporate information and market intelligence on African growth markets, has completed a $1.35 million fundraising round, as it accelerates its rollout across the region’s most dynamic economies.

The new funds will be used to deepen Asoko’s research and analysis of more than a thousand privately held companies in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana, the company’s top markets, and to extend regional operations and build out the technology behind its digital platform.

Asoko represents a new and innovative approach to conducting business development and due diligence.

In building the continent’s leading business intelligence platform, Asoko will lower the cost of doing business, and make available intelligent and regularly updated information for regional and global corporates, investors, lenders, professional service providers, DFIs and governments looking to engage with African companies.

Rob Withagen, co-founder and Managing Director of Asoko Insight, said: “This new funding will allow us to give customers insight on even more companies across Africa, while adding analytics in a seamless user experience. Africa’s got great corporations. Now it has great corporate data, available to everyone.””

The round was led by North Base Media, an international media-investment group specializing in growth markets, and CRE Venture Capital, an investment firm focused on technology-enabled businesses across Sub-Saharan Africa. NBM and CRE join a group of prominent angel investors, such as Emergo Partners and J.E. Berman Associates as shareholders.

“The rapid growth and modernization of African national economies is creating enormous demand for sophisticated, reliable information about business and companies,” said NBM Managing Partner Marcus Brauchli, who will join Asoko’s board.

He is a former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. Also joining the board for NBM will be Stuart Karle, NBM’s general counsel and a former chief operating officer of Reuters News.

Jonathan Berman, CEO of J.E. Berman Associates and author of “Success in Africa: CEO Insights from a Continent on the Rise,” continues to serve as independent director.

Pardon Makumbe, founding partner at CRE Venture Capital observed, “One of the longest standing, albeit understated, impediments to doing business in Africa is the scarcity and price-tag of high quality, intelligent and actionable corporate and market information. Asoko’s pan-African business intelligence platform is tackling this challenge head-on, and will transform how people do business in Africa.” Pardon, a former Principal at EL Rothschild, will serve as a Board Observer.

Asoko Insight provides data and analysis on African companies to global corporates, investors, governments and African players.

It was established in 2013 with a core mandate to improve the availability and quality of corporate data in Africa’s most promising economies. The company is headquartered in London and operates through research bases in Accra, Lagos and Nairobi.

NBM is an investment firm focused on media, journalistic enterprise and digital-driven opportunities in growth markets.

CRE Venture Capital invests in and partners with visionary entrepreneurs in technology-enabled startup companies in Sub-Saharan Africa.

J.E. Berman Associates invests in young companies focused on Africa with extensive growth potential.

The firm also advises a small number of Fortune 200 companies and major investors with African interests.

Emergo Partners is a late-stage accelerator and venture capital firm dedicated to emerging and frontier markets.