SweepSouth, the pioneer in using technology to provide on-demand and regular home cleaning services on the African continent, has concluded its Series A financing round.
The funding comes from strategic investor Smollan, the international retail solutions company and associate of WPP and Advantage Solutions, as well as from Draper Dark Flow, the Silicon Valley VC fund for Africa established by Tim Draper. Existing investors, Identity Development Fund Managers (via their Identity Future Fund) and Africa Angels Network (as CRE VC) also participated in the round, in addition to new incoming private investor Nkosinathi Maphumulo (DJ Black Coffee).
Since SweepSouth’s last funding round, announced in early 2016, the home cleaning platform expanded into Durban and Pretoria, launched its native mobile app and grew its revenue by 6 times. This track record of growth and consistent service delivery in newly launched territories, combined with its aggressive strategic growth targets of expanding outside of South Africa and creating work for 10 000 SweepStars within the next 12 months, has supported SweepSouth in successfully closing its third funding round.
“We’re particularly excited about the strategic nature of our partnerships with our new incoming investors. Smollan’s reach – it operates in 36 international markets – will provide the perfect avenue to rapidly expand internationally,” says Aisha Pandor, SweepSouth co-founder and CEO.
“From our very first meeting we had a wonderful synergy with Dave and Mike Smollan, and believe our shared values and combined strengths will result in a lot of great new innovation from SweepSouth. DDF Capital brings its expertise in scaling tech, particularly in Africa, and DJ Black Coffee is an inspirational and influential local ambassador with a brand we’re proud to be associated with.”
“This funding will lay the groundwork for our international and service expansion, helping us intensify our efforts to create work for thousands more, and positively impact even more people in additional African markets,” says Alen Ribic, co-founder and the company’s chief technology officer.
The company has already created work opportunities for over 3,000 women who were previously unemployed and underemployed, and recently reached the milestone of 1-million hours of cleaning.
Of the investment, David Smollan, CEO of Smollan, says: “We are proud to partner with Sweepsouth which is perfectly aligned with our purpose of developing and executing leading solutions which deliver growth and have a profound social impact.”