South African start-up Intergreatme has raised R32-million – R8-million over its original target through a public equity drive on Uprise Africa’s crowdfunding platform. R27-million was raised in the first 72 hours.The company operates in the emerging segment of RegTech, or regulatory technology, defined by Investopedia as “the management of regulatory processes within the financial industry through technology”.
“In our flagging South African economy, the raise is particularly significant, and proves that crowd funding is a viable platform to raise equity funding for a sound business as well as a vehicle for individual wealth creation,” said Luke Warner, co-founder of Intergreatme.
According to Warner, there is still keen interest from the public in the investment opportunity.
“Pledges continue to pour in,” he said.
The Intergreatme raise allows individuals to invest a minimum of R1000 and a maximum R5-million in the business.
Warner says that the technology driving both Intergreatme’s identity mobile apps and web-based services, as well as Uprise Africa’s crowdfunding platform, are wholly developed in South Africa by South Africans.
Vision of no more forms
Intergreatme says it has a vision to craft a world where consumers never fill out a form again.
“The frustration of constantly having to fill out forms and carry personal documentation, is a daily issue facing over 25-million credit-active South Africans,” said Warner.
“We have addressed this by developing an award-winning web and mobile app platform, which transforms onboarding for businesses and digitises individual citizen’s personal information.”
Intergreatme will use the funds raised to create a self-service platform for all size of businesses, while adding additional features and functionality to the Intergreatme app. These include a digital affidavit, trusted connections, QR information sharing, digital ID and drivers’ licenses.
Their self-service platform will drive a steady flow of businesses to sign up by themselves, allowing the core operation team to focus on larger potential partners with longer procurement cycles and much larger customer bases. Already, the business says, it has signed up a number of local banks and telco’s to manage their RICA and FICA processes.
Integreatme also plans to expand its operations beyond South Africa, through its partnerships.
“This crowdfunding campaign for Intergreatme is a historic moment, and one which we hope will fundamentally change the current funding landscape in South Africa,” said Tabz Qadir, CEO of Uprise Africa.
Warner and his team hope that the crowdfunding initiative via Uprise Africa will pave the way for smaller startups to seek funding and validation by ordinary people as well.
For more information on the Intergreatme crowdfunding pitch, visit https://uprise.africa/view_pitch/intergreatme
