Superside, which operates a network of freelance creatives that are tapped by companies to work on logos, display ads, packaging, bigger marketing campaigns and other design-based efforts, has bagged $30 million or R637 million.
The Series A funding round co-led by Prosus Ventures and Lugard Road Capital. Prosus Ventures is the venture investing arm of Prosus, which is majority-owned by global consumer internet group Naspers.
The funding will help fund Superside to expand in South Africa.
Through its unique subscription model, Superside connects companies with a dedicated team of vetted, award-winning designers and project managers to provide quality design work, faster and more cost-effectively than traditional creative agencies and at a far superior quality than freelance marketplaces.
The platform has a growing base of designers in South Africa (20% of its current team members are based in SA) and Superside will use the funds to help grow its workforce in the country.
It will also use the proceeds to scale its product and tech teams to build additional features, as well as to attract more leading creatives across the globe.
The company also plans to hire close to a hundred engineers in the next 12 months to further build out its design operations platform.
“South Africa is a hugely important market for Superside. As a fully-remote and global team across 19 time zones, we have had success in finding and retaining top creative talent in South Africa,” Fredrik Thomassen, Superside’s Co–founder and CEO, said.
“Currently, 20% of our team members reside in South Africa and we will be investing heavily to grow our workforce of creative directors, designers, copywriters, and customer success executives in this market.
“It’s wonderful to work with creatives all over the world. Superside is enabling this community of talented designers to work on challenging and exciting projects wherever they are based and at the compensation they deserve. We’ve proven our ability to sustain a truly global, remote work model with an innovative approach and are looking forward to more growth to come.”
The global adoption of digital marketing has resulted in an explosion of digital content. Spend on digital marketing is expected to reach $455 billion in 2021 with 30-60% going towards content. The portion spent on content creation will continue to rise as spending shifts further to social media platforms. Thus, there is a greater need for rapid, high-quality content creation, which has become a major bottleneck impacting an organization’s ability to scale.
“As the need for high-quality, fast-turnaround digital content continues to rise, and companies look for increasing brand distinction, Superside is fulfilling the demand by offering a unique subscription that provides fast, flexible and diverse design from some of the world’s top creative talent,” Sandeep Bakshi, Head of European Investments, Prosus Ventures said.
” In addition, as the the pandemic has accelerated the momentum of flexible and independent work, Superside is highly attractive for creative team members, offering remote, flexible, and high paying jobs, allowing them to work with top brands globally. We believe Superside can usher in a new era of creative solutions for top companies globally, and are excited to partner with them on this vision.”
Superside has seen significant growth in the last few years, working with reputable brands, including Amazon, Salesforce and Cisco, who have consistently praised Superside’s fast turnaround times, creative diversity, high-quality content, and impressive access to global top talent.
Long-time customer Amir Jaffari, Growth lead at Shopify summarized: “Superside makes it easy for Shopify’s Growth team to get design done quickly without impacting the quality. Their platform is intuitive and enables speed, and the dedicated team model ensures everyone thoroughly understands our brand and day-to-day needs, allowing for scale.”
In addition to the funding round, Superside also announced that Mats Diedrichsen, the former Chief Marketing Officer of Delivery Hero will be joining as a board member, and Sandeep Bakshi from Prosus Ventures will be joining the board as an observer
