Swoop Scoops $7.3M Seed to Build an African Super App
🦅 Meet Swoop
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Swoop is building a platform for consumers in Africa, starting with food delivery in Eswatini and Nigeria.
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They just locked in a $7.3M seed round to get things moving.
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Investor check. Long Journey, Variant, and Version One led the funding. Soma Capital, Dune Ventures, Zero Knowledge Ventures, Walter Kortschak, and Base Capital also pitched in.
🥘 Serving the Underserved Market
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Nigeria has a $1.1B food delivery market. Right now, most people still don't order their meals online, despite the wide adoption of the Internet.
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Swoop is using food as a starting point. Since people eat every day, it helps them get users onto the app frequently.
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The goal is to use that daily habit to eventually offer other things like grocery delivery, rides, and financial tools.
🇳🇬 The Lagos Move
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The startup actually started in Eswatini, where they picked up 6,000 users in their first month.
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Now, they’ve moved to Yaba, Lagos, to tackle a much larger market after a successful launch in Eswatini.
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Thiel Fellow. The team has 28 people on the ground. It’s led by 19-year-old co-founder Aubrey Niederhoffer, who is a Thiel Fellow.
🚀 What’s Next
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The $7.3M will go toward finding new users and building out operations across Nigeria.
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They aren't stopping at food. They want to turn the app into a "super app" that handles logistics and banking for the whole continent.