Terragon Raises $5m from TLcom Capital to Scale Data Penetration in Africa

Emma Okonji
Nigerian-based Terragon Group, Africa’s leading mobile marketing company, has closed a $5 million funding deal led by Africa-focused TLcom Capital, to scale up internet data penetration in Africa.

The company announced that the funding would be used to develop further its proprietary marketing technology, which connects online and offline mobile channels to provide African brands and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with more customer reach, engagement and conversions with self-service access. Terragon is pioneering the platform with Africa’s largest telecoms company, MTN Nigeria. The Adrenaline platform from Terragon offers unprecedented reach and engagement channels for the African mobile customer with associated data and intelligence as is available on mobile web.

CEO, Terragon Group, Elo Umeh, said: “The new investment will enable the Lagos-headquartered company hire the best available talents to drive business development efforts across industry verticals and solve unique mobile challenges to unlock significant value for African businesses.”

With African businesses in various industries struggling to reach and engage customers in the face of limited internet access and low literacy levels, Terragon is helping clients including FCMB and FBNQuest in financial services and Unilever and Samsung in the consumer goods space, connect with new and existing consumers across online and offline mobile channels providing the reach and targeting to deliver on their marketing objectives.

Partner at TLcom who is joining Terragon’s Board, Ido Sum, said: “We have followed Terragon closely for a while, seeing it developing into a world class marketing technology company targeting the unique African opportunity.

“Over recent years we led investments into Upstream (exited to Actis), as well as NYC based Persado and Cubiq who are among the leaders in the MarTech space in the US, and we are convinced that Terragon’s deep market understanding and platform quality can allow Africa’s top brands as well as SMEs to finally reach, acquire and serve African consumers at scale like never before,” Sum added.

TLcom’s commitment is the second from its $40 million TIDE Africa Fund for early and growth-stage digital companies.
Terragon has over 100 employees with offices in Lagos, Nairobi, and Accra, alongside technology hubs in Bangalore, India and Ife, Nigeria. It works closely with the largest mobile network operators in Africa, fast moving consumer goods brands, agencies, financial institutions, leading publishers, mobile device manufacturers and app developers on the continent giving brands access to over 100M consumers on mobile web and non-web channels.

The Terragon Group is a data and marketing technology business that unlocks value for businesses to reach the mobile audience in Africa. Terragon creates and strengthens the connections that bond people to brands by delivering services and solutions borne out of its core business capabilities.

Related Articles