South African email productivity software startup Sortd has raised early-stage funding from Cape Town based venture capital (VC) firm HAVAÍC as it pushes its solutions out globally.
Developed by Rodney Kuhn, Wayne Silbermann and Bradley Greathead, Sortd is a subscription-based productivity suite for users of Gmail and GSuite that provides small and medium-sized enterprises with a simple way to manage sales and customer projects.
It doubles up as a way for heavy emailers to get on top of their inboxes, and, in spite of limited focus on expansion to date, has been downloaded 250,000 times from users across the world.
The startup believes it is well positioned to win over some of the existing few billion Gmail users and capture new ones as Gmail grows its business market share, and has now raised an undisclosed round of funding from HAVAÍC, which advises and invests in early-stage, high-growth businesses, to help it to just that.
“The journey with HAVAIC has been both challenging and very rewarding – they have added some really important perspectives to our thinking from an investment standpoint, and we are very happy with where we’ve gotten to date,” said Sortd co-founder Wayne Silbermann.
Amir Padovitz, a HAVAÍC advisor, Sortd board member, and a senior manager with Google, said the startup provided a unique tool for businesses and professionals to accomplish involved tasks without context-switching across applications, increasing productivity and simplifying task management.
“This is the direction that enterprise productivity as a whole is gradually moving to and where Sortd is well positioned to succeed,” he said.
HAVAÍC partner Rob Heath said the company had been watching and working with the Sortd team for quite a while to get the startup into the best position for international growth.
“Like many successful entrepreneurs that have gone before them, we believe the Sortd team will once again show that South Africans can succeed in the global technology market place,” he said.
HAVAÍC has been an active investor in South African tech in recent months, backing the likes of Instant Property and Aura, while it is also looking further afield, having invested in Kenyan addressing startup MPost last month.
