Tizeti, a Nigerian internet provider, has raised $3 million to expand its services. That's according to TechCrunch.
The startup which operates the wifi.ng brand is looking to use the funds to expand to Ghana after launching a wifi.africa brand. Other African countries are likely to follow afterward.
4DX Ventures led the round. It has also invested in other notable African startups. Flutterwave, Andela, Sokowatch, and mPharma being some of them.
Headquartered in Lagos, Tizeti participated in Y Combinator's Winter 2017 batch. It has thus joined the growing list of YC graduates that have successfully raised follow-on funding.
Also read: Take a look at these 14 Y Combinator graduates from Africa
Notably, Tizeti raised $2.1 million in seed funding in June last year. Investors included Western Technology Investment, Social Capital, Vy Capital, Picus Capital, Ace & Company, Lynett Capital Partners, Zeno Ventures. YC’s Michael Seibel and Gabriel Hammond also participated in the round as angels.
This recent round, which is likely to be their Series A, thus, brings their total funding raised to date to at least $5.1 million.
Last year, Tizeti announced a partnership with Facebook at AfricaCom.
This would result in the expansion of "express wifi in Nigeria". With plans to "roll out hundreds of hotspots over the coming months across Africa.
Founded in 2012, by Ifeanyi Okonkwo (COO) and former ExxonMobil engineer Kendall Ananyi (CEO), the startup uses solar powered wifi towers to provide "high-speed broadband internet" to residences, businesses, events, conferences and also deploy public Wi-fi Hotspot at different locations.
Internet access and connectivity is still a big problem across the African continent. So, a couple of startups and multinationals are coming onboard to tackle it.
Nigeria's Flobyt, which counts Don Jazzy as a co-founder, says that it is working on offering free wifi. Google is piloting the use of balloons in hard to reach areas, starting with Kenya and Uganda, in Africa.
While Facebook brought to a halt its plans to use drones to beam internet. Though that doesn't mean they have given up on their plan.