South African event ticketing and cashless platform Howler has received a second round of growth capital investment from three partner companies for an undisclosed amount.
The funding will be used to further develop the platform’s end-to-end event technology stack, grow market share in Sub-Saharan Africa, and expand into Europe and Asia Pacific countries.
Techstars, Platform Investment Partners Growth and Platform45 are the three companies investing in the firm that provides ticketing and cashless technology to medium and large scale events. Howler claims to have processed more than R1.5bn ($99.8m/£77.2m/€91.1m) worth of transactions to date.
Shai Evian, co-founder and chief executive of Howler, said: “Being our second round of investment, this is really significant for Howler for many reasons.
“In 2017, we were licensing our tech and had a team of about 25 people in the company. Back then, Techstars really helped us shape a vision and put us on a different trajectory. With Platform Growth’s first investment round and Platform45 as a development partner, we are two-and-a-half years down the line, 70 people strong and have managed to develop and own 100% of our entire platform.”
Shaun Richards, managing director of Platform45, added: “Our vision has always been to build software that helps businesses and people do more through the power of tech. When we started working with the team behind Howler, we immediately knew this wasn’t just any idea, this was an idea that could change eventing around the world.
“With our investment in Howler, the commercial team at Howler can focus on growing their footprint globally without any concerns over the software scaling seamlessly, Platform45 can focus on what we do best – supporting Howler’s platform team in building cutting-edge features that make Howler one-of-a-kind.”