Yazi, an AI-native research platform built on WhatsApp, has closed its first institutional funding round led by 3 Capital Ventures (3CV), the South African early-stage venture firm that spun out of Allan Gray.
The investment will be used to accelerate product development, including the launch of automated voice interviews via WhatsApp, expand Yazi’s research participant panel across Africa, and scale internationally as demand from UK and European research agencies grows.
Founded in 2022 by Mzwandile Sotsaka (chief technology officer) and Timothy Treagus (CEO), Yazi has built a WhatsApp-native research platform that enables organisations to run AI-moderated interviews, surveys, diary studies, and panel research at scale through the messaging channel that 3,2-billion people already use every day.
“We built Yazi because the research industry was ignoring the biggest communication platform on the planet,” says Treagus. “WhatsApp has 94% penetration of the internet population in South Africa alone. Traditional research tools, the ones that need app downloads, email addresses, and reliable broadband, just don’t work here. We’ve built the infrastructure to fix that.”
The investment values the South African-founded startup at a pre-money valuation of R30-million. “Reaching this milestone is incredibly exciting for us as founders,” shares Treagus. “From the beginning, our vision has been to build a solution that is not only relevant to the South African economy, but capable of making an impact on a global scale.”
Yazi is AI-native from the ground up. The platform uses AI to interview participants in natural conversation, probing deeper and following up in real-time, the way a skilled researcher would, but at the scale of hundreds of simultaneous interviews. Entire multi-day diary studies can be created, deployed, and analysed using AI. The system automatically generates transcripts, identifies themes, and delivers presentation-ready analysis.
With access to 1,8-million pre-qualified research participants across demographics and geographies, Yazi enables teams to get answers fast, from product feedback and brand perception to policy research and customer experience insights, all through the messaging app people already trust.
“What makes Yazi different is the channel,” says Sotsaka. “We’re not asking people to download an app, create an account, or sit at a laptop. We meet them where they already are. That’s why our response rates are fundamentally higher than anything traditional research can deliver, and it’s why we’re reaching populations that the industry has historically failed to access.”
Yazi’s revenue grew 2,5x over the past financial year, with 64% month-on-month growth in its most recent quarter. The company now works with major South African enterprises including Old Mutual, Pick n Pay, Discovery, Capitec, and Ipsos, alongside a growing portfolio of international clients across the UK, Europe, and the US.
More than 65% of Yazi’s revenue is now denominated in foreign currency, a signal that global demand for WhatsApp-based research is accelerating.
3 Capital Ventures backs early-stage, post-revenue B2B companies in South Africa, aiming to be the first professional investor a founder brings on. The firm, which began inside Allan Gray before becoming independent, focuses on companies that help businesses run smarter in a market where growth has been slow but the need for efficiency is urgent.