Startup Spotlight #173: Mandla

Mandla is an innovative, black-owned e-learning language app created for those who seek to strengthen their unbreakable connection with their African roots.

Mar 21, 2022

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3 years ago · Frederick Daso

I got the chance to speak with Wenitte Apiou, founder and CEO of Mandla, about what he’s working on at his startup, and any advice he has for emerging entrepreneurs.

Mandla is an innovative, black-owned e-learning language app created for those who seek to strengthen their unbreakable connection with their African roots.

Apiou is a Burkinabé American sophomore EE and Math double major at Vanderbilt University.

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Startup Spotlight: Mandla

Problem: Africa is the most linguistically diverse continent on Earth, with over 2000 languages and billions of native speakers. Despite recent advances in online language learning, there remains no major education platform that supports more than one or two African languages.

Market: The initial target market is the African diaspora, of which there are over 150M globally.

Solution: Mandla is an e-learning platform that aims to teach African languages, build an African language database to improve translation models, and preserve cultures.

Team: Our entire team is composed of first-generation African immigrants from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya. Growing up, we each faced the problem of wanting to improve our fluency in our parents’ native languages and not being able to find any quality resources to do so.

Recent Success:

Apiou: Community buy-in. The problem we’re solving is one that affects a community our team is deeply in touch with. People have wanted a product like ours for a very long time and as soon as they learn it exists they are ready to try it out, bugs and all. We actually currently have better retention metrics than Duolingo.

Recent Struggle:

Apiou: Fundraising has been incredibly difficult. It is difficult to convince investors of the market need and size for our product. Even those we can appropriately convince of size are skeptical of our specific solution. Communicating our larger vision and value proposition seems to fall on deaf ears. There’s also a general ignorance of Africa and African languages that certainly doesn’t help.

Founder Advice:

Apiou: The entrepreneurship journey requires a high degree of self-confidence and determination. Regardless of what you’re building, there will be critics and naysayers, so it is really up to you to learn to ignore them and continue pushing if you’re truly convinced that there’s a need for what you’re building.

Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:

Apiou: Here are three founders you should check out next!

Rohan Marwaha and Dev Patel, Co-founders of Aqua: Aqua is private equity and alternative asset investing simplified.
Simon Pompan, Founder of Fanfix: Fanfix allows creators to better monetize their platform and gives fans more intimate access to exclusive content via subscription.
Tyler Bernstein, Founder of Zeno Power: Zeno Power provides clean, plug-and-play power, anywhere in the universe.

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