There’s nothing like a distinct segment language to create a type of lock-in for a startup, and that’s precisely what’s occurred with e case of Gjirafa. Focusing solely on Albanian-speaking nations, co-founder and CEO Mergim Cahani began out growing an Albanian language search engine after which actually digitizing the nation’s data, from bus timetables to a database of native companies and venues, and past.
Investors have been been drawn to this ’emerging-market strategy’ and put in a $2 million Series A 3 years in the past to “grow the Balkans’ internet economy” by digitizing and indexing data in Albania and Kosovo, thus making Gjirafa the regional chief in search, e-commerce, and internet advertising.
Today it claims three million month-to-month distinctive customers throughout its companies and has now raised a sequence B spherical of $6.7M from Rockaway Capital, which has been backing the corporate since 2016. The new funding is meant for scaling the present merchandise regionally.
The Series B will enable the corporate to double their present workforce (presently at 70 full time, and about 100 in whole with part-time), scale with the prevailing merchandise regionally, and ship different digital companies that aren’t out there within the area.
Dušan Zábrodský, funding companion at Rockaway, says: “Mergim Cahani and his team validated our trust and truly succeeded in building a centrepiece of innovation for the whole region. Thanks to this very positive experience we are committed to build up a digital economy in the region and we actively explore new investment opportunities where we can use our knowledge to digitalize traditional industries.”
He says Rockaway group’s funding is long-term and strategic as a result of they assume Gjirafa might turn out to be and a whole platform/community of further companies that shall be used all through the area.
Using the identical technique, Rockaway beforehand discovered success within the DACH area, the place it constructed up a web based journey group below the Invia Group model, and within the discipline of e-commerce by way of Mall Group, which operates on seven markets within the CEE area. These teams have contributed considerably to Rockaway’s revenues, which crossed the brink of EUR 2 billion in 2018.
Gjirafa has turn out to be the most important e-commerce participant within the area having a number one OTT product: GjirafaVideo and GjirafaStudio, equal to Hulu and Netflix; producing personal content material and presently has about 1 million minutes of video consumed a day (and rising double digits on month-to-month foundation), and over 80 stay channels on-line.
Gjirafa, Inc., is the quickest rising firm within the area, and the expansion is spectacular at 314% CAGR. To put it in perspective: when GDP indicators are normalized for the Balkans area vs the US, it has an equal income progress as Google had between 2001-2004 and persevering with on the identical path.
