Dataphyte secured $100,000 in a seed funding round. The announcement was made on Thursday by Dataphyte. Dataphyte is a media, research, and data startup company based in Nigeria. The company, established in November 2020 is significantly leading data innovation, data analysis, and sharing relatable stories.
The Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF) made the seed funding round. MDIF is a non-profit investment fund that supports independent media in countries where freedom to independent media is under attack.
MDIF provides technical support and advisory services for media groups in addition to assisting them with affordable debt and financial equity.
MDIF’s program director for Africa & MENA, Bilal Randeree, said, “We are delighted to have made our first investments in Dataphyte and Zitamar News, two highly impressive media companies that provide important services to the people of Nigeria and Mozambique,”
Dataphyte said the investment will be useful in building digital products and enlarging the company’s business in data journalism. Dataphyte has so far built three excelling products and has supported the media ecosystem with open data resources and capacity building.
“The purpose for us is to apply data to respond to three existential challenges in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. One, lead a successful business model mix for data journalism; two, offer data analytics and information services to the corporate and development sectors and lastly to support the government in its adoption of data and technology for public policy and good governance,” stated the founder of Dataphyte, Joshua Olufemi.
The company, known as the first journalism platform, recently launched DATAPLEX – a data merchandise platform – as well as its training academy platform.
According to the company, they aided the Ekiti State government in building an open data site as part of their commitment to work with the government to make socioeconomic and public finance data more available.
Adenike Aloba, the managing editor of Dataphyte said the company has prospects of using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to power its journalism.
