Serena Williams’ firm among investors in Stears’ $3.3m funding

Stears, Nigerian data and intelligence company, has raised $3.3 million in seed funding to expand its services into new markets in Africa.

In a statement on Tuesday, the company said Serena Ventures was one of the firms that participated in the seed round.

Others include MaC Venture Capital (leading the seed round), Melo 7 Tech Partners, Omidyar Group’s Luminate Fund, and Cascador.

Serena Ventures is a Washington-based venture capital firm owned by Serena Williams, the American tennis star who retired in September.

With the new funding, Stears said it aims to be the most trusted source of data and insights in Africa, adding that the continent needs deep, reliable, regular streams of data, not just articles or reports.

“It means building the most valuable database on African economies and markets. It means expanding our intelligence team into Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt. It means developing local expertise that cannot be replicated with remote offices,” the statement reads.

“To become the most trusted source of data and insights, we have to do three things that haven’t been done in Africa before; first, identify all existing sources of data; second, design a shared language to understand all the data; and third; combine these datasets to create proprietary views of the African market that don’t exist anywhere else.”

Speaking on the fundraising, Preston Ideh, chief executive officer of Stears, said global professionals need his company’s data and insight because “banks, research firms, development organisations, and investors are already using our early products”.

“Our customers tell us we are building a ‘systemically important’ company to address Africa’s data problem,” he adds.

“Globally, information providers like Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters have built data powerhouses, which act as information gateways to Western markets.

“We are executing an African version of this model, focused on the often missing, outdated, or poorly digitised African datasets needed by operators, finance and policy professionals, researchers, and even regulators.”

Also speaking, Serena Williams, founder and managing general partner at Serena Ventures, said better and more transparent business and financial data is expected to lead to more investment on the African continent.

“Stears has shown a deep appreciation of the complexities involved in solving this problem for global professionals,” Williams added.

“Through a combination of technology and data, Stears is well placed to leverage the massive data opportunity on the continent.”

On his part, Marlon Nichols, co-founder and managing general partner at MaC Venture Capital, said: “Africa is home to the first humans and is now the next frontier for business. Many multinational corporations and governments understand this to be a reality.”

“They also appreciate that several African countries are subject to unique business processes and are primarily cash-based economies, which results in understated GDP, among other things.”