South African employee wellness platform Strove has closed a ZAR4 million (US$277,000) seed funding round to help it on its road to expansion to the United Kingdom (UK).
Founded in 2020 by Chris Bruchhausen in partnership with venture builder The Delta, Strove is an activity-based mobile rewards application that empowers organisations to inspire their employees to live a healthy and active life, combatting inactivity, burnout, and chronic stress.
The platform uses activity-tracking and gamification to incentivise workforces to be their best selves, with rewards coming from over a dozen partner brands, such as Old Khaki, Poetry, Bootlegger Coffee, Mugg & Bean, Dis-Chem, Vida e Caffè, and Engen.
Strove has now raised a ZAR4 million (US$277,000) seed funding round, led by VC firm Launch Africa and featuring a handful of angel investors. The startup, which only released its initial product in January this year, plans to expand to the UK, and has already started onboarding local partners to create a rewards ecosystem that will best motivate UK employees.
“We are really excited about this capital raise for Strove. The raise is great validation for our model at Delta of supporting and accelerating ventures from zero to one, and furthermore being able to do this at a scale of nearly 10 ventures per quarter,” said Louis Buys, chief executive officer (CEO) of The Delta.
“The Delta was one of the first investors when we started the company and they have been an amazing tech partner to us since inception,” said Bruchhausen.
