Suba, the location-based photostream app developed by Ghanaian developers, Nelson Klutse and Eric Hackman, has received investment from Reggie Rockstone, the influential Ghanaian musician.
The terms of the investment were not made public, but the brand equity that comes with Reggie signing off on Suba will be at the center of Suba’s drive for uptake and expansion.
“Of more prominence is the fact that with Reggie’s influence in the entertainment industry here in Ghana and also Africa, we are poised to gain a lot of traction both locally and internationally,” Suba co-founder, Nelson, told TechCabal.
Reggie is most popular for founding “hiplife”, a genre of Ghanaian music that blends hip-hop and high life influences. Suba will be leveraging Reggie’s network to drive uptake. Reggie’s network which includes the active 20-somethings who bump “hip-life” in different forms, are just the right audience profile for the photo app.
“By tapping into the power and scale of that juggernaut, Suba has a real chance of becoming one of the continent’s first home-grown mobile app success stories,” Emmanuel Quartey, product director at Ghana’s Meltwater Entrepreneurship School of Technology said. It was at MEST that Suba was incubated and received its seed funding.
Suba won first place in the app developer competition at the 2015 Mobile West Africa that happened in April.
Reggie is joining a growing list of African celebrities investing in technology businesses. This practice which is already popular in Silicon valley is only beginning to gather steam in Africa.
In Nigeria, former mainstream act, elDee, invested in a laundry on demand startup before he went on to begin work on his music analytics startup, Playdata. Famous producer, Don Jazzy (read his recent interview on TC), is also pitching in in Nigeria’s technology scene. He was one of the mentors at 440ng’s 2014 accelerator programme. While no talks of publicly investing in tech businesses have emanated from his end, he has remained active in the ecosystem with a recent endorsement deal with local e-tailer, Konga.
“Reggie himself is an avid user, of social media,” Nelson told techcabal, “his investment in Suba is a big statement to how far we’ve come as a company and importantly what the future holds for us”
The cash injection, Nelson tells us will go into awareness and expansion.
“With this association we’re positioned to be the official photo app for all explosive music concerts in Ghana, Nigeria and the rest of Africa.”
Imae via: Suba
