A Win For Black Media: Big Cabal Media Raises $2.3m To Expand Its Line Of Digital Products
In 2021, venture capital invested just $115 million in digital media globally, a tenth of the $1.1billion it funded in 2015, but not much came to Africa.
Digital newsrooms in Africa are reportedly said to be more likely to receive story grants than business funding, with a few exceptions like OMG Digital.
Of the reported $4.3–$5 billion raised by African startups in 2021 where fintech received 53–63% of the volume, digital media companies are one of many sectors that have traditionally been overlooked in the conversation of tangible ventures.
But last week Big Cabal Media, a leading African digital media company, defied the odds.
It announced a $2.3 million Seed funding round, emphasizing its commitment to keep building exciting and authoritative media products and brands.
The new investment round saw participation from existing investors: Unicorn Capital Partners and Future Africa. New investors such as Mac Venture Capital and Luminate participated.
Before this large sum of funding – it had received over $600,000 raised in funding. Since then BCM has grown with two major publications, TechCabal and Zikoko, reaching over 30 million people monthly across platforms, with over 170,000 newsletter subscribers, and a 225% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2018 and 2021
The firm, founded in 2013 by Bankole Oluwafemi, plans to develop its product serving, staff, and audience with this new funding. “We are expanding our video production by exploring docuseries and short films,” Aladekomo said.
“We will be transforming our studio into a community hub for creatives, and introducing 3 new tech products, including the Zikoko app and Zikoko Memes 2.0, which first launched in 2020. We will also be building out new audiences while offering competitive wages.”
TechCabal started as a deliberate effort to cover the Nigerian tech ecosystem. While the publication started out focusing solely on the Nigerian startup space, it soon expanded its coverage to all of Africa. A year after TechCabal launched Seyi Taylor joined the company as co-founder and CEO, while Oluwafemi continued in his role as Editor-in-Chief. They continued to expand TechCabal’s coverage and scale up its operations.
In 2016, the two decided to try something different with the launch of Zikoko, a publication many likened to Buzzfeed at the time of its birth.Two years after the launch of Zikoko, Tomiwa Aladekomo joined the company, taking over as CEO.
