South Africa’s AURA secures $4.7m Series A funding to expand its emergency service

AURA, a South-African medical and security response platform has secured $4.7m (R62m) in a Series A round of funding to scale its operations globally.

The funding round was led by MultiChoice Group (MCG) with participation from KLT Holdings and Buffet Investments.

AURA was founded in 2016 by Warren Myers, Ryan Green and Adam Pantanowitz. The medical emergency startup is currently South Africa’s leading security and medical response marketplace.

The marketplace uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to hone its system and ensure that the closest responders are dispatched to a distress call- medical or security.

Calvo Mawela, Group CEO of MultiChoice said the investment in AURA was a means to boost their service offerings and drive economic development.

  “To accelerate the evolution of our ecosystem by offering additional value-added services to our customers, we are investing in scalable and innovative technology platforms like AURA. Not only does it strengthen our service offering and enhance long-term value creation for shareholders, but it also drives economic development and job creation.”

Calvo Mawela, Group CEO of MultiChoice.

Accelerating emergency services

The platform was born out of the critical need for more efficiency within the South African Security industry in order to combat the growing crime rate.

AURA allows anyone to access the closest vetted private and public security and medical response unit to their location – anywhere, anytime – using a connected device such as a smartphone, a Bluetooth device or any internet-connected device.

By partnering with premium armed and emergency medical response providers, AURA has built a network of trusted and reliable response vehicles. The platform currently has about 400,000 active users on its network.

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning to ensure that the closest responders are dispatched to a distress call, response times drop from an average of 30 minutes to as low as one to five minutes.

Expansion drive

The company expanded to East Africa and the UK earlier this year and the new funding deal will see it outpace its already-impressive growth trajectory.

According to co-founder Ryan Green, the new funding deal presents an incredible opportunity for AURA to enter new markets and seamlessly ramp up operations.

With a current staff strength of about 50 members, talent acquisition is set to be increased especially in the tech department.

“We are gearing some of the funding towards hiring top talent to head up each new region while growing teams in established regions – especially our tech team. The result is stronger relationships and value propositions for suppliers at all levels in the marketplace.”

Ryan Green, co-founder

 For fellow co-founder Warren Myers, the investment is the first step towards AURA’s vision of a safer future for all.

“Our hope is to become the centre repository for risk data – not only responding to emergencies but to proactively predict and deal with any type of violent crime, whether on a one-on-one scale or the size of a riot. The data is already available to do so, it’s just not centralised. Yet.”

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