{"id":460193,"date":"2026-02-10T13:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T13:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/460193\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T13:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T13:20:11","slug":"talk360-raises-r22m-in-new-investment-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/460193\/","title":{"rendered":"Talk360 raises R22m in new investment round"},"content":{"rendered":"

South African tech startup Talk360 has raised R22m in new funding to expand its customer base and build a digital goods trading service. <\/p>\n

The transaction is seen as another sign of a maturing South African startup ecosystem where angel or early investors in companies are able to make a return and there is a larger flow of capital to the platforms that need it. <\/p>\n

Talk360 is a calling app that helps consumers make international calls to mobile and landline numbers for less. It has more than 6-million customers.<\/p>\n

The company announced a $1.4m secondary investment, led by local venture capital group Havaic. There was also participation from Universum Wealth, a limited partner in Havaic\u2019s $50m African Innovation Fund 3.<\/p>\n

This follows the $1.4m the company raised in September \u2014 about R24.34m at the time. This was in a funding round before series A and led by long-standing investor Havaic. That round was based on the same $30m valuation the company received in 2022, when it raised $7m through two seed funding rounds.<\/p>\n

At the time, Dean Hiine<\/a>, co-founder and MD for Africa at Talk360, told Business Day the new capital injection is earmarked to push Talk360\u2019s goal of connecting 7-million people by 2025 while strengthening the prospects for long-term profitability.<\/p>\n

Even with the growth of platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, FaceTime and others, which all have calling capability, Hiine said Talk360 still enjoyed growth. A big reason is that many people, particularly in Africa, do not have access to smartphones and internet-based calling, leaving a gap for Talk360 to exploit.<\/p>\n

This brings the total raised since 2022 to $10m. <\/p>\n

The company said the latest investment will support its next phase of product development and platform expansion. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis includes further improvements to the user experience and the continued build-out of Shop360, a new feature that enables users to instantly send mobile airtime, data bundles and top-ups to family and friends in more than 180 countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the years, the company has recorded a number of key milestones. It confirmed it is making profits, which bodes well for its place in the market, especially as investors are increasingly tightening up and looking for returns. <\/p>\n

It said this marks Talk360\u2019s \u201ctransition from an early-stage scale-up to a disciplined, sustainable business\u201d.<\/p>\n

The company is also celebrating the successful spin-off of its payments arm into NjiaPay, which is looking to capitalise on the gap left by the discontinuation of Skype-out for travellers and business users worldwide. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs Talk360 consolidates its place as a leader in the African market and moves into the growth phase of its startup journey, we are excited to further support management through greater shareholding and an ever-evolving relationship built on a common vision to solve real-world challenges in Africa and beyond,\u201d said Ian Lessem, managing partner at Havaic.<\/p>\n

In November, Lessem\u2019s firm participated in a $10m series A funding round for SwiftVEE<\/a>, which has positioned itself as Africa\u2019s largest online livestock trading platform. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South African tech startup Talk360 has raised R22m in new funding to expand its customer base and build…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[214779,28,158,214780,214775,214776,214777,214778],"class_list":["post-460193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-african-startup-ecosystem","tag-business","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-havaic-investment","tag-njiapay-payments-arm","tag-shop360-feature","tag-talk360-customer-growth","tag-venture-capital-in-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}