South Africa: Flood Raises $2.5m to Power Superapp Infra in Emerging Markets

• South African startup Flood has raised $2.5 million in seed funding to scale its “SuperApp-as-a-Service” platform, designed to digitize offline retail in emerging markets
• The company provides telcos, banks, and enterprises with a no-code, API-based commerce platform
• The new capital will support faster expansion, telco and bank partnerships, and onboarding of thousands of offline merchants

South African startup Flood has raised $2.5 million in seed funding to scale its “SuperApp-as-a-Service” platform, designed to digitize offline retail in emerging markets. Founded by André de Wet, the company provides telcos, banks, and enterprises with a no-code, API-based commerce platform that supports marketplace models across products, services, payments, and logistics.

Flood helps partners build digital ecosystems by embedding commerce, loyalty, and payments directly into apps already used by consumers. The platform supports key features like merchant onboarding, loyalty programs, discovery tools, real-time analytics, and in-store pickup. It has seen traction in South Africa, India, and the Maldives, with plans to launch in more markets later this year.

This latest seed round follows a $1 million raise in July 2024. The new capital will support faster expansion, telco and bank partnerships, and onboarding of thousands of offline merchants.

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Key Takeaways

Flood’s value lies in providing infrastructure for digital transformation without requiring partners to build their own SuperApps from scratch. By targeting telcos and banks–who already have mass user bases–Flood enables rapid deployment of digital commerce layers embedded in everyday apps. With 95% of retail in emerging markets still offline, the startup fills a gap between high smartphone penetration and underdeveloped digital retail infrastructure. In one deployment, Flood reached daily usage among 28% of a country’s population and onboarded 8,000 merchants in three months–evidence of latent demand for digitized retail experiences. By acting as a white-label platform, Flood avoids consumer acquisition costs and instead scales through large enterprise partnerships. As Africa and Asia’s offline retailers seek digital upgrades, Flood’s “commerce-in-a-box” model could be a catalyst for mass adoption of embedded marketplaces across verticals like telco, fintech, FMCG, and public services.