Star Power Partners II, a mentorship-driven, startup accelerator and seed fund, has participated in a $1.1m investment round in Bamba, a boutique African data collection agency.

Star Power Partners II is a fund of funds backed by investors including Draper Associates, the Foundry Group, Iron Gate Capital, Landscape Capital, Right Side Capital, Silicon Valley Bank and Walt Winshall.

The seed funding round was led by Rishi Varma, founder and CEO of US research company AlphaDetail and Brett Hurt, founder of BazaarVoice and Data.world.

We are very proud to be investors in Bamba,” commented Hurt.

“Not only are [they] providing a very valuable analytics service, but they are also providing jobs in countries that really need them. This is one of those rare businesses that has a combination of a massive market opportunity and a real social impact. Their focus just couldn’t be better,” he said.

Other investors also participated in the funding round, including Alykhan Nathoo, Partner at Helios Investment Partners; Edward Mathias, MD of The Carlyle Group; and Faisal Jiwa, Investment Director at AfricInvest Capital Partners  - to name a few.

Bamba specializes in innovative solutions for rapidly gathering cost-effective and high-quality consumer insights from emerging markets. 

The company was founded in Kenya by Al Ismaili (CEO), Shehzad Tejani (COO), and Faiz Hirani (CTO) and had a core workforce of 7 full-time employees in 2015.

“Since then, we’ve further expanded to employ 21 full-time staff, along with numerous other field consultants around the world. It’s incredible; we’ve established a global reach, spanning Canada, US, UK, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa and Nigeria. This is in large part thanks to ongoing support from our investors,” said Ismaili.

This is not the first time Bamba has raised funds. 

In November 2016, the company got funding from Darshan Chandaria, CEO and Director of the Chandaria Industries Group, for $250k in Kenya's reality business TV show, Lion's Den.

Bamba said that its success in attracting investors was the result of a number of factors.

First, in the past several years, consumers in emerging markets have become more engaged and connected through widespread adoption of smartphone or feature phone technology, presenting the opportunity to finally tap into the wants, needs and opinions of these consumers for companies agile and innovative enough to build the right tools.

Second, investors have become increasingly interested in opportunities to invest in the African market in recent years, and accelerator programs have stepped up by accepting greater numbers of African startups into their mentorship programs.

Finally, Bamba was itself accepted into the prestigious TechStars accelerator program in 2016, where they gained access to a well-established network that provided them with business development mentorship, customer acquisition, capital, talent recruitment, as well as a sizable initial financial investment as part of the accelerator program.

Having achieved its investment goal, Bamba now looks to the future with plans to put the $1.1m towards “developing new innovative data collection solutions, supporting a larger number of clients, and expanding its team and geographical reach”.