Tizeti’s CEO on Series A Financing
We recently announced that Tizeti has raised $3 million Series A round. 4DX Ventures led this round, also joined by Lynett Capital, Social Capital, WTI, Friale Fund and Golden Palm who are all existing investors. This round brings our total investment to $5.1 million. For me, the party is only about to get started, and I’d like to share my thoughts.

Strategy
We set out to provide unlimited, affordable internet to everyone in Africa. In order to bring this to fruition, we knew that to get Nigerians who are mobile-first to warm up to the idea of an internet connection at their home or office would require us to be disruptive in the pricing of our service so that it is affordable and can complement or replace their data capped mobile service. We are delivering on this mission by building Capital & Opex efficient internet infrastructure and passing the savings to the customer by offering a sustainable uncapped service that is 30–50% cheaper than their mobile data plans.
Our innovative use of Solar powered Wi-Fi Tower gives us the chance to truly deliver on our brand promise, which remains to deliver affordable unlimited internet to Africa.
Growth:
Today we serve over 100,000 customers in Lagos, Nigeria and it continues to grow rapidly. We have moved from serving only multi-tenant facilities to over 7,000 locations and now providing the desired internet capacity for corporate organizations with no data caps.
We are thankful for our results, but also focused on planning for the future. Our series A which targets improving our operational capacity, allows us completely cover Lagos, Nigeria, and expand into other African markets, starting with Ghana.
We look forward to these milestones while working side by side with our partners, such as Mainone, Facebook and Cambium Networks.
As Tizeti customer’s data consumption explodes, we are improving our customer service, upgrading our network infrastructure and improving our internal processes to keep up with their demand and provide a fantastic user experience for them.
Challenges:
It’s been mostly great but I’d say that wireless interference associated with the W-Fi remains a challenge for us. Our Research and Development team are working with newer access technologies and we have licensed spectrum from the regulator to help mitigate its effect.
My Inspiration:
Tizeti is a startup and as CEO I am inspired every day by a few other things, which i’d like to share. It is great to see people come online every day, it is great to observe the amount of bandwidth that we are able to serve them with at a given time. The average data consumption on our network exceeds 150GB a month.
I am also excited for Nigeria, and in extension Africa, for the number of innovations that have been (and will be) birthed and supported, because affordable internet with no data caps is available. Today virtually everything has gone online and Tizeti is enabling uncapped access to a wealth of information available online.
We are also launching Tizeti stories which gives us the opportunity to hear from the customer’s voice, their Tizeti story. From the business owner who has gained more efficiency because the internet of their cloud based service and ability to communicate has improved astronomically because they have great internet, to a parent who is able to remotely watch their ward at school, real-time, via CCTV over Tizeti’s service, with many more stories. As a CEO this singular experience has been most rewarding. Yes, we are in business, but we are also solving problems and impacting lives.
It is also been great to watch our team maintain our company’s culture of efficient fast-paced execution, through diverse innovating stages from inception, and the revenue growth that has propelled us to profitability, in a very challenging and competitive telecommunications sector. From a 5 man team in an 8 by 10 ft room to over 200 staff in a great workspace today, I remain inspired.
Our key success factors as a company remains our strong company culture, our capital efficient infrastructure, and our strong partnerships. We will leverage these to help solve the internet problem across Africa.
Kendall Ananyi
Founder and CEO,
Tizeti (YC W17)
