Lagos – Messaging pioneer (Jongla), on Thursday announced that the company had secured 5 million Euro investment, taking the total closed to date to 12 million Euro.

Arto Boman, Jongla’s founder said in a statement in Lagos that the new capital would help the company to scale its businesses in Nigeria, Africa and globally.

According to Boman, the Finnish company will also continue to innovate with new features and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).

“Messaging apps are the new ecosystem for the next generation of apps and services.
“Our team of investors has seen firsthand the positive direction the messaging business is heading in and they want to enable the next chapter of the Jongla story.
“With the new capital and through new strategic partnerships, our aim is to further leverage AI and bots that we believe will revolutionise messaging between businesses and consumers.’’

Boman said that the company had set plans to further strengthen its position as the go-to messaging apps for emerging markets.

He said that by 2020, there would be 6 billion smart phone users worldwide as the people in new markets access the mobile Internet and adopted messaging through apps.
“Jongla plans to take advantage of this opportunity with their accessible and social apps.

“We have seen rapid growth this year, driven by the demand for light and social apps in emerging markets.

“This Autumn alone, our users have sent three times the amount of messages, the uplift has been huge.

“ Among our top countries are now Brazil, Nigeria, Turkey, Iran, India and Indonesia, all emerging markets, which alone cover 2 billion of total population,’’ the statement quoted Riku Salminen, Chief Executive Officer of Jongla as saying.

In the year, Jongla launched its Social Messenger, the most significant upgrade to the apps till date.

The new apps have social features added like the ability to discover new and interesting people around you; the new Jongla has been designed to bridge the gap between social networks and messaging.

Also, this year Jongla officially rolled out across Africa.

Jongla is growing fast in Africa by allowing people to message better and save money and data with the world’s lightest messenger.