Businesses in Africa encounter many problems when communicating with their customers because communication channels are mostly single-channel platforms. What this means is that businesses have to get a tool for every channel on which they communicate with their customers, be it voice, WhatsApp, email, or text. But this leads to fragmentation in communication, which makes this sort of communication ineffective.
This problem has led to the rise of unified communication (UC) tools, which integrate various communication tools into a single platform. UC solutions help businesses reduce operating expenses, increase revenue, and strengthen customer relationships; it is no wonder businesses are transitioning from single-channel to UCs.
Although unified message-delivery solutions exist globally, African businesses are cut off and underserved due to service restrictions and poor delivery from global service providers.
The global unified communications market, led by the likes of Verizon, IBM Corporation Cisco Systems Inc, Microsoft Corporation, Avaya Inc, and Alcatel-Lucent is estimated to be worth $93.52.billion in 2021, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.5% from 2021 to 2028.
While data on Africa’s market is largely unavailable, Africa-focused unified communication startup, Sendchamp, estimates the market at $4.7 billion at a 27% YoY growth rate.
Overall, the market in Africa is relatively untapped, which is why Sendchamp raised an angel round of $100,000 to help businesses integrate the entire customer journey in a single app.
This round, which saw participation from DFS Lab, HoaQ club, Hustler Capital, and angel investors like Prosper Otemuyiwa, Samson Goddy and others, will help Sendchamp deepen product development, and expand its team and presence to Kenya.
“Some businesses want to reach out to their customers via different channels— email, voice, and text—but getting a solution that can do all of these things was a problem. So, we did multiple integrations to solve the disjointed customer management experience,” explained Sendchamp’s CEO, Goodness Kayode, in a video call with TechCabal.
Although the startup is just coming out of private beta, Sendchamp has already worked with renowned businesses like TeamApt, Bumpa, Selar, Flux, and Edves to reach and engage customers. Over the last 8 months, it has helped these companies lead generation and conversion efforts by powering over 3 million messages to 300,000+ customers. The company has also built a developer community of over 500 people since it started.
Founded by Goodness Kayode and Damilola Olotu, Sendchamp wants to improve customer relations for technical and non-technical business owners. “A lot of the existing solutions were too technical. So, we decided to change that,” Kayode said.
Prior to his time at Sendchamp, Goodness, who functions as CEO, led operations at Sprinble, a software development agency that built solutions for businesses like Carbon, Kudi, Coronation Registrars, ALML Group, etc. Damilola Olotu, who is CTO, also formerly worked as a software engineer with Baxi (Capricorn), Upperlink Limited, and other companies in the Nigerian tech ecosystem.
“Sendchamp is a simple communication platform to help businesses onboard, engage, market, support, and retain customers—all in one place,” explained Kayode.
Speaking on the recently concluded funding round, Sendchamp CEO and co-founder, Goodness Kayode, said, “We’re thrilled to have concluded this round, backed by some of the most helpful investors in the African ecosystem. As a company, we’re committed to helping African businesses improve their relationships with their customers by building the simplest solution on the market. We have a lot more non-technical business people than technical, and we are building largely for them. We want technical and non-technical business people to be able to communicate effectively with their customers via multiple messaging channels from a single platform.”
“Sendchamp is building the core communications layer of the digital commerce stack on the continent, and they’re leveraging no-code tools so that sellers, large and small, can easily manage their audiences and grow their businesses. This team has a world-class knack for customer-centricity and DFS Lab is extremely excited to back a team that can execute at this level,” said one of the investors in the round, Stephen Deng, who is a partner at DFS Lab.
