South African on-demand home cleaning startup SweepSouth is to expand to Botswana, Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria in the next two years after raising a Series A funding round.
Disrupt Africa reported earlier this week SweepSouth had concluded a new round of funding comes from strategic investor Smollan, Tim Draper’s Silicon Valley-based VC fund Draper Dark Flow, and existing investors Identity Development Fund Managers and CRE Venture Capital.
The startup, which launched in June 2014 and raised its last funding round early last year, said it would use the investment to expand into new markets and service lines, having recently launched a mobile app and expanded to Durban.
Co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Aisha Pandor has since told Disrupt Africa Botswana, Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria are SweepSouth’s initial targets for expansion, though it will most likely only launch in the latter during 2019.
“Smollan, our lead investor in this round, has a presence in 36 countries, including countries in Southeast Asia, the UAE, and countries in South America, so those will be future targets,” she said.
The startup will also roll out a host of other services in addition to home cleaning using this funding round.
“These will be based on demand from our customers, but we will start with gardening services and then pool cleaning and car wash services. This is the plan now pending further research and feedback from our customer base,” Pandor said.
SweepSouth’s revenue has grown by a factor of six since its last funding round, and the company now aims to create work for 10,000 people within the next 12 months.
The company has already created work opportunities for over 3,000 women who were previously unemployed and underemployed, and recently reached the milestone of one million hours of cleaning.
