Yazi Acquisition

Framing the Context for Yazi's Strategic Acquisition

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Yazi Investment: Mini-Memo

Executive summary

Yazi is a market research platform designed for agencies conducting qualitative research in emerging markets, especially Africa. By integrating WhatsApp bots, Yazi provides unparalleled reach and engagement.

The platform solves key pain points faced by traditional digital research methods:

Captures more representative data by leveraging WhatsApp's 90%+ penetration rate in Africa

Drives higher response rates (3-10x over email/SMS) through real-time engagement

Enables more affordable data collection due to WhatsApp's low data costs

Allows flexibility in data types (text, images, video, voice notes) for deeper qualitative insights

Yazi is well-positioned to capitalize on the $700M market research industry in Africa, which is poised for rapid digitization. With strong early traction and a clear path to $5M+ revenue, Yazi presents a compelling investment opportunity.

💊 Current pain-point

Reaching people digitally in emerging markets is extraordinarily hard, especially when it comes to Qualitative Research.

Inadequate Engagement with Traditional Digital Methods:

Email-based surveys suffer from low response rates and fail to reach a significant portion of the population who lack email access.

Digital tools often miss lower-income consumers due to digital unfamiliarity and concerns over high data usage.

Challenges in Media-Rich and Multi-Day Studies:

Participants struggle with uploading media content and frequently forget to return for multi-day diary studies, leading to incomplete data collection.

Limited Reach and Non-Representative Sampling in Emerging Markets:

Current digital methods are ineffective in engaging a diverse demographic, particularly in emerging markets, resulting in non-representative samples and low overall response rates.

Inefficiencies in Diary Study and Focus Group Execution:

Participants often neglect diary entries due to lack of reminders and the inconvenience of app-based surveys.

Manual moderation of WhatsApp focus groups and diary studies is time-consuming, data-heavy, and leads to frustrating delays due to dependency on moderator availability and response times.

Benefits of Yazi and WhatsApp Integration:

Unparalleled Reach and Engagement: WhatsApp's penetration rate exceeds 90% in many African countries, offering a broader reach and significantly higher response rates (3x-10x) than traditional methods.

Efficiency and Real-Time Insights:

Streamlines the research process for client and participant, allowing for bulk messaging and custom link generation for participant recruitment in a single channel.

Flexibility and Depth in Data Collection: Supports various question types and media. WhatsApp enables greater access to qual data which is more insightful than quant and can be turned into quantifiable insights with AI.

Accessibility Across Socioeconomic Strata:

Low data costs associated with WhatsApp ensure broader participation in data-sensitive markets.

📊 Product

Yazi’s market research platform runs surveys, focus groups, and diary studies through WhatsApp, allowing for a much larger segment, faster insights, and personalised engagement.

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📋 Features

💬 Form builder

Create multiple types of questions, use question routing, automatically generates survey in WhatsApp after launch

📈 Insights / Reporting

Interactive results dashboard, live connection

⛔️ Dynamic Access to Participants

Select qualification criteria in app, Survey shown dynamically in Menu (based on qualification), Send Template message invites, Retarget and notify

🔍 Participant Tracking

Pass/Fail participants, manage incentives and payments

🔥 Outcomes

Increase representativeness of sample, leading to more accurate data.

👉 Research more frequently: Cheaper & Faster turnaround time

👉 Reach your target audience: Bigger reach on WhatsApp

👉 Richer data: Access more revealing and insightful data (images, videos and voice notes)

👉 Better decisions: Representative audience & accurate data

Timeline for Features needed for Saas MVP

Timeline for Features needed for Saas MVP

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Roadmap list: Focused on Qual Research

Roadmap list: Focused on Qual Research

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💳 Business Model (Predominantly usage-based for now)

$820

Once-off Setup fee

WhatsApp number setup with custom messaging and onboarding

$100 - $250

Monthly pricing

Tiered based on conversation volumes. Full access to Bulk message, Reporting, Interviewing

$150 - $750

Research project pricing

Project setup, testing, data cleaning. Additionally: Incentive management, survey design

🚀 Customer Acquisition & Growth Strategy

Who is our customer target?

🕋 Market research agencies

💼 11 - 200 employees

🌎 Based in Africa, India, UK, UAE or global with presence in Emerging Markets

🔬 Do qualitative or quantitative 1st party data acquisition research

💊 Struggle with completion rates and data accuracy in emerging markets

🧭 Current way: Use WhatsApp group for focus group and run manually OR use digital link tools like Dscout, Indeemo, Recollective

How are we selling to them?

🧑‍💻 SEO:

WhatsApp keyword⁠

and

Competitors alternative⁠

articles plus

Useful Data sources⁠

page

LI LinkedIn: Data content through Tim’s LinkedIn

📩 Outreach: Personalised cold email, LinkedIn message

👫 Partner content: Guest posting and writing in market research publications

Goals for 6 months

🧑‍💻 Website: Current = 1.4k pm traffic. Grow to 3k and convert 1% into clients.

LI LinkedIn: Current = 4.2k followers. Grow to 10k and convert 1% to clients.

📩 Outreach: Send 90 email pm, 90% open, 15% reply

👫 Partner content: Medium,

GreenBook Blog⁠

Quirk's Media⁠

Research-live.com⁠

Mrweb.com⁠

MRS⁠

about WhatsApp in research

🌍 Market Size

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View of SAM: Bottom-up Market Sizing calc (Annual)

View of SAM: Bottom-up Market Sizing calc (Annual)

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🔥 In last 12 months...

R1.1m

Revenue in 2023

R31.8k / R22k

Average deal-size / Median deal-size

17

Different clients

28%

Market research agency clients in 2023

1.2k

Traffic per month

140

Keywords in SA, 34 in US, Traffic growing with new site

Overall Roadmap

Overall Roadmap

Time period

Item

Team & Description

👨‍👩‍👧 Team

💰 Funding Ask

Yazi needs R200,000 to hit product milestone and be in position to sell the research product. Yazi’s existing business model

Yazi 2.0 Platform Competitors

Yazi 2.0 Platform Competitors

Name

Website

Description