Jambo raised $7.5 million in seed funding to build Africa's web3 user acquisition portal and democratizing access to income-generation opportunities.
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 adoption of play-to-earn models has led to the raising of millions of dollars in venture capital for Yield Guild Games, which is located in the latter.
Africa is ripe for web3 because of a mix of positives such as a fast-growing population, solid smartphone penetration, and increasing crypt adoption, as well as negatives such as low GDP per capita and unemployment.
Jambo is positioning themselves for the next boom. Jambo wants to bring millions of users to web3 in Africa through its applications, according to James Zhang, its co-founder and CEO. He founded the company with his sister after noticing the success of web3 projects in Southeast Asia across Africa.
Jambo is taking a two-sided approach by allowing its users to do both activities when they play games under a revenue-sharing model.
Users can save their data spend when using Jambo. 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.
Jambo is partnering with social media companies so that users can earn token and convert it to income while watching their content on its app.
The reason we can do that is through partnerships with these companies as we tokenize a part of their advertising budget and directly provide to the end- user.
Play-to-earn games are the last part. There are currently no popularized play-to-earn web3 games from Africa because the infrastructure to create them is lacking. Jambo wants to build that infrastructure. His company doesn't plan to take a cut from its users' earnings, unlike guilds that take percentages of profit from their users. Jambo's revenues would come from web2 models, charging advertising dollars and commissions from selling airtime and data.
James is the CEO of Jambo.
The CEO said that Jambo is testing out over 10 play-to-earn games to introduce to its users in the next couple of months. How does Jambo expect its project to take off smoothly in a region with little or no knowledge of web3 workings?
Education is the core of what we do because I think there is no shortcut in Africa. You have to educate the user base before you can even think about monetization. We are launching classes with a full curriculum on web3. He said that they would launch that in more than five universities in Africa by the end of the first quarter.
Jambo has signed up over 12,000 students across 15 countries since the beginning of the year. Students would be able to explore opportunities in play-to-earn gaming and Defi. Hundreds of ambassadors sign up students for the 10-week programs at colleges and physical partner locations.
Jambo believes its model of educating users about play-to-earn games and DeFi could lead to financial prosperity in ways Africans could never have accessed before.
Educating Africa's young population about web3 and decentralization seems to be a correlation with recent web3 upstarts in Africa. Nigeria-based Nestcoin raised $6.4 million to scale its web3 initiatives, which include Breach, a media outlet that creates bite-sized and informative crypto content for its users.
Both companies have different play-to-earn models. In setting up a new web3 segment in Africa, they are similar to setting up a platform in other parts of the world.
While customary platforms help Africans save and send money, new upstarts are increasing earning and wealth potential for users.
There is no money to save in Africa because there are only 1% and 99% the same. The chief executive said that they set out with a different methodology to help the everyday person make money.
Every component of the super app is designed to help the everyday person make money from play, from watching videos, and from saving money on data credits. In three to six months, once our app comes online, the everyday person can make $50 a month from playing on Axie, make another $20 a month from watching videos, and make another $10 a month from the money they save on data credits. Our app can do that with every person.
Jambo expects to have a live version by Q3. The 60-man team spread across sub-Saharan Africa, Santa Clara and Shenzhen raised a party round from investors who have backed other web3 companies.
Three Arrows Capital (3AC), Alameda Research, Tiger Global, Delphi Ventures, AllianceDAO, DeFiance Capital, Yield Guild Games, and Polygon Studios are included. Some of the angel investors are from the web3 community, like the co-founder and CEO of Polygon, and the ex-ParaFi partner.
Jambo will do in Africa. Santiago R Santos, a web3 investor and ex-ParaFi partner, said he was excited to back the A+ team in becoming the Web3 super app of the continent.
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