Kindaba, an Edinburgh-based private visual messenger for families, has announced a new investment from Skyscanner founder Gareth Williams to grow their user base and development capabilities.
A product of Edinburgh’s Seed Haus accelerator, Kindaba offers families a way to stay connected without the intrusion of advertisements. The initial concept for the company began in 2015, when co-founders Rob Gelb and Lizzie Brough began comparing notes on how to best juggle their growing careers while also trying to stay in touch with their families. As their families became increasingly distributed around the globe, they found existing messaging apps used to stay in touch were lacking when it came to consumer privacy and data protection. The eventual co-founders turned to building an alternative, which became Kindaba.
The company is already working to help parents with young children, grandparents, and diaspora communities stay in contact. With this investment, the company aims to grow its user base and recruit further staff to support development in Edinburgh. Kindaba estimates the market for its product to be worth £45 billion.
“The team is fantastic,” said Gareth Williams, co-founder of Skyscanner and investor in Kindaba. “I can see in Rob, Lizzie, and Will an intense desire to make something happen. Whatever the problem space, founders need to have that laser focus in order to stand a chance of getting to their destination.”
Kindaba will continue to raise investment through crowdfunding.
“We believe that high revenues should lead to high levels of social impact,” said Kindaba's co-founder and CEO Rob Gelb. “Finding investors and a community of creators is important for that. The opportunity to make funding accessible to all through a crowdfunding round has been really attractive to us as a result.”
European investments in family tech
Kindaba is just one of the players in the growing landscape of European startups developing family technology solutions in Europe. According to tech.eu research, the “Fam-Tech” sector secured 140 deals with over €270 million invested from 2015-2018 (Q2). During this time, the UK, Sweden, and Germany accounted for over half of total investment. While Kindaba has not disclosed the amount raised in this deal, the average round size invested in European companies in this space is €2.42 million (median round €1 million) over the last three years.
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