Jambo raises $7.5M from Coinbase, Alameda Research to build “web3 super app” of Africa

techcrunch.com:

Jambo, a Congo-based startup building Africa’s web3 user acquisition portal through “learn, play, earn” and democratizing access to crypto-based income-generation opportunities, has raised $7.5 million in seed funding.

Experts say Africa is poised to be disrupted by web3 in a similar fashion that has seen Southeast Asia become one of the best markets for web3. The latter is home to startups like Axie Infinity and Yield Guild Games, which have raised millions of dollars in venture capital owing to the adoption of crypto and play-to-earn models.

The mix of positives such as a fast-growing population–the youngest globally–, solid smartphone penetration, increasing crypto adoption, and negatives like low GDP per capita across board and unemployment makes Africa the next ripe ground for web3.

And a few companies, such as Jambo, are positioning themselves for this next boom. According to James Zhang, its co-founder and CEO, Jambo wants to onboard millions of users to web3 in Africa through its applications. He founded the company with his sibling Alice Zhang — both Congo-born Chinese — in December 2021 after noticing the opportunity to duplicate the success of web3 projects in Southeast Asia across Africa.

Although users of Axie Infinity and other guilds only earn an income while playing games under a revenue-sharing model, Jambo is taking a two-sided approach by allowing its users to do so when they partake in web2 and web3 activities.

For instance, users can save their data spend when they use Jambo. Zhang explains that Jambo partners with telecom providers to get an almost 70% discount and sell directly to its users at a 50% discount from the original cost. “It’s one of our main user acquisition strategies where we want to