New Investment Platform launches with ‘the African Starbucks’ – think Kickstarter or Crowdcube but for developing countries.
Emerging Crowd is the UK’s first global crowd-funding and investment platform that allows ordinary investors (like you and me) to invest in companies in frontier and emerging markets.
Why is this of interest to us?
Well, not only are they kicking things off with two investment opportunities in Africa (a destination that we’re currently featuring)…but also one of them is an exciting coffee chain dubbed ‘the African Starbucks’. And we love our coffee!
Neo – ‘the African Starbucks’
Neo, an established and fast growing chain of coffee shops in Nigeria, was founded by two brothers in 2012 and it already has the largest number of coffee shops of any chain in West Africa.
Neo’s CEO, Ngozi Dozie, explains:
“Nigeria’s consumers are only just discovering coffee shop culture — the growth potential is huge.
…Well executed coffee shop chains are a proven business model that has been hugely successful in the world’s richer countries, and the trend is now taking off among the millions of aspirational middle-class Nigerians.”
The growth potential is for coffee in Nigeria is huge.
Another company to be successfully admitted to Emerging Crowd is ‘Bozza’, a pioneering new mobile and desktop platform for downloading and streaming music, video and spoken word content created by emerging and established artists from across Africa.
Bozza founder and CEO Emma Kaye, notes that in Africa her target audience for downloading and streaming is enormous.
“60% of Africa’s population is under 25, and they’re eager media consumers”
Emma Kaye, Bozza founder and CEO
The success of these two businesses and the launch of Emerging Crowd illustrates that Africa is going through a really exciting period of growth at the moment, and this can only be a positive thing for travelers to the area!
So for all you budding investors or coffee connoisseurs, find out more at www.emergingcrowd.com
