Africa-focused venture capital firm TLcom Capital, with participation from other investors, has invested $5m in Terragon, Africa’s mobile marketing company.

Ido Sum, Partner at TLcom Capital said: “We have followed Terragon closely for a while, seeing it develop into a world class marketing technology company targeting the unique African opportunity.”

Sum is joining the board of Terragon, with TLcom Capital founder and Managing Partner Maurizio Caio taking an observer seat. 

“Over recent years we led investments into Upstream (acquired by Actis), as well as New York based Persado and Cuebiq who are among the leaders in the US MarTech space. We are convinced that Terragon’s deep understanding of the market and the quality of their platform can allow Africa’s top brands and SMEs to finally reach, acquire and serve African consumers at scale,” Sum added.

The funding will be used to develop further Terragon’s proprietary marketing technology, which connects online and offline mobile channels to provide African brands and SMEs with more customer reach, engagement and conversions with self-service access. 

Terragon is pioneering the platform with Africa’s largest telco – MTN Nigeria. 

The Adrenaline platform from Terragon offers unprecedented reach and engagement channels for the African mobile customer with associated data and intelligence as is available on mobile web.

With African businesses in various industries struggling to reach and engage customers in the face of limited internet access and low literacy levels, Terragon is helping clients including FCMB and FBNQuest in financial services and Unilever and Samsung in the consumer goods space, connect with new and existing consumers across online and offline mobile channels providing the reach and targeting to deliver on their marketing objectives.

Terragon has over 100 employees with offices in Lagos, Nairobi, and Accra, alongside technology hubs in Bangalore, India and Ife, Nigeria.

It works closely with the largest mobile network operators in Africa, fast moving consumer goods brands, agencies, financial institutions, leading publishers, mobile device manufacturers and app developers on the continent giving brands access to over 100 million consumers on mobile web and non-web channels.

Elo Umeh, Terragon CEO, said: “The new investment will enable the Lagos-headquartered company hire the best available talents to drive business development efforts across industry verticals and solve unique mobile challenges to unlock significant value for African businesses.”