Joseph Rutakangwa Spent Eight Years Searching for Market Insight Tools. So He Built One.
July 15, 2025
After nearly a decade searching for reliable consumer insight tools, Joseph Rutakangwa realized the solution didn’t exist—so he built it himself. The result is Rwazi, an AI-powered market intelligence platform that just closed a $12 million Series A led by Bonfire Ventures.
Founded in 2021 with co-founder Eric Sewankambo, Rwazi is tackling a global blind spot: the lack of high-quality, real-time consumer data in emerging and underserved markets. The company’s mission is simple but powerful—to bring visibility to consumer behavior in 190 countries by using first-hand, voluntarily shared data.
From Frustration to Innovation
Rutakangwa’s journey began with a simple question: Why is it so hard to get good consumer data outside of the U.S. and Europe?
“There was an abundance of consumer and market-level data for places like the U.S., U.K., and a few parts of Western Europe. But when it came to international markets—including economic giants like India, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Turkey, and China—there was nothing usable,” he told TechCrunch.
He tried everything: buying stats from trade agencies, paying for consumer research reports, analyzing fragmented datasets. Nothing delivered the real-time, ground-level insights global brands needed. So the team focused on what Rutakangwa calls zero-party data—information that’s willingly shared by consumers through their normal routines, validated and collected across regions in real time.
Building Rwazi: Real-Time Intelligence at Global Scale
At its core, Rwazi is an AI-powered software platform that helps businesses understand what consumers are doing, what they want, and how those behaviors are shifting—all in real time. This level of visibility allows companies to:
Predict purchasing trends
Lower customer acquisition costs
Improve loyalty and retention
Make faster, smarter strategic decisions
The company already works with big names like Coca-Cola, Visa, Nestlé, and Pampers, according to its website. And with this new round of funding, Rwazi plans to scale its AI co-pilot system, expand its engineering team, and deepen its infrastructure globally.
Raising Capital with Intent
This $12 million Series A follows a $4 million seed round in 2022, also led by Bonfire Ventures. Rutakangwa described the latest raise as “selective,” emphasizing the importance of choosing investors who deeply understand the problem and share the vision. New backers in this round include Santa Barbara Ventures, Newfund, and Alumni Ventures.
What Sets Rwazi Apart
The market for consumer insights is crowded—with legacy players like GFK and Ipsos dominating for years. But Rwazi is taking a different approach: no modeled or inferred data, no guessing games. Instead, the platform is built on verified, opt-in data directly from the source—consumers.
“Winning today means anticipating shifts, seeing around corners, and making confident moves before the competition even senses a change,” Rutakangwa said.
The Road Ahead
As businesses race to stay ahead in a world where consumer preferences shift overnight, Rwazi is positioning itself as a critical intelligence layer for global brands. By bringing real-time, local insights to the forefront, the startup hopes to redefine how companies understand their markets—whether in Los Angeles, Lagos, or Lahore.
In a world hungry for better decisions and deeper consumer understanding, Rwazi isn’t just building software. It’s building clarity.
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