ACR #18: Onboarding 1 million Africans to Web3
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Cassava Network, an African web3 company, recently launched the third iteration of its product which allows businesses/brands to host marketing campaigns and provide a means for them to reward their users for completing specific tasks.
It’s one of the few African web3 startups that had a major funding round last year, with $8 million scooped up from over 40 investors like Dragonfly Capital, Coin98 ventures, Adaverse and Portico ventures.
We caught up with the CEO and head of marketing of Cassava Network to help us understand their ambitious goals in Africa.
“Our goal is to be a seamless platform that enables brands to boost their engagement and acquire new users. We are doing that by partnering with the largest consumer-facing apps such as Boomplay, AHA Games and Carry1st,” according to Mouloukou Sanoh, CEO of Cassava Network.
The head of marketing, Harrison Obiefule, spoke further about the scale of one of the recent partnerships with Transsion:
“Our partnership with Transsion is focused on the African entertainment industry. Transsion owns the largest music streaming platform in Africa – BoomPlay, which has over 50 million active monthly listeners. This is a massive audience we plan to tap into. In the next five years, we will see a Web3-powered media and entertainment industry in Africa.”
The web3 startup also has another partnership with Carry1st and Play1st, two of the biggest players in the gaming industry.
“One of the areas our partnership with Carry1st and Play1st will address is the area of education…We are also exploring options for users who play games and use their platform to earn CB Coins. With these CB Coins, users can get discounts on their platform, purchase in-game and in-app items and many more”, Harrison added.
Since it kickstarted in 2021, the startup has racked up about 40 brand partnerships with companies across web3, media and entertainment space.
And this year, it is hoped that those partnerships will turn into actual users. Harrison said they “aim to onboard 1 million African users to the platform by the end of 2023.”
A similar product Crew3, now called Zealy, in France has 700,000 monthly active users completing over 100 million tasks since launching in early 2022, with Renault as a major partner.
How the product works, simply:
A business/brand sets up its community on Cassava Network.
The brand creates a marketing campaign and invites people to complete specific tasks like signing up, following a Twitter page and inviting a friend to earn loyalty points. Brands can leverage the potentially huge community on Cassava Network for promotion too.
Users can then redeem loyalty points for cryptocurrencies, NFTs, airtime, event tickets, movie tickets, vouchers, and discounts across Cassava’s partner network.
If the partnerships with Transsion and Carry1st work out as planned, Cassava Network could really onboard millions of Africans to its Web3 ecosystem.
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That’s all for now. See you next week Monday!