Coinbase Ventures, Polygon Studios, Delphi Ventures, 3 Arrows Capital, Alameda Research, AllianceDAO, Tiger Global, DeFiance Capital, Hashed, UOB, Signum Capital, BH Digital, Yield Guild Games, and others have all contributed to the $7.5 million seed round funding for Jambo, a Web3 banking app for the African continent. Jambo now has a market capitalization of $50 million dollars.
Jambo counts Messari CEO Ryan Selkis, Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon, and Polygon CEO Sandeep Nailwal among its early investors and advisors, in addition to the aforementioned seed investment investors.
Jambo aspires to be an all-in-one program for Africans, allowing users to use the blockchain to bank, access crypto via decentralized exchanges and play blockchain games. It is a “super app,” according to co-founder and CEO James Zhang. Jambo is focusing on educating kids on a continent where 60% of the population is under the age of 24 in addition to its crypto banking ambitions.
To aid in the onboarding of new users to Web3, the company has developed an ambassadors program and the JamboAcademy. As of last week, Jambo had over 50 ambassadors scattered across 15 African countries, as well as over 12,000 students enrolled in its educational program, which teaches adolescents about play-to-earn games and Web3 technology.
The business now wants to deploy services in 14 of Africa’s 54 countries. Africa will continue to be a leading market for mobile app developers aiming to tap into Web3 with almost half a billion people now utilizing mobile services and a predicted 30 million using 5G networks by 2025.
And, with this latest investment, Jambo hopes to capitalize on this trend as well.