Onboard, the Tunisian startup transforming customer experience management for hardware with 3D smart manuals, has raised $175,000 in funding, from Kepple Africa Ventures and other renowned entrepreneurs such as Ahmed Hentati and Karim Jouini.

Safwen Bouali, Cherif Redissi, and Amine Troudi founded Onboard in 2017. It is a SaaS platform solution, enabling hardware makers to create best-in-class support experiences for their customers. It effectively replaces old-school confusing paper manuals, archaic support systems, call-centers, and manual creation software/services. Onboard makes the experience a one-stop-shop for hardware makers. First, Onboard enables hardware makers to create manuals in 3D in minutes and share them in an instant with their customers. The customers then, can view them on all of their devices and ask questions where they get answers “visually” instantly; and if they are having trouble, they can open a ticket on the spot. Hardware makers can manage customers’ feedback and issues without having to buy multiple custom software solutions to solve this problem.

Onboard previously raised a total of $250,000 in Seed funding from multiple accelerators, notably Flat6Labs Tunis, leveraging this investment in its technology and talent development. After launching a private Beta in June, the startup is now launching the 1.0 version of its SaaS platform this week, publicly accessible and available for use, providing a seamless customer experience with additional features and optimized customer support.

The secured funding will be leveraged to support Onboard’s solution development as well as its expansion within the French and the European markets.

The target market it operates in is the customer experience management industry, which is projecting annual growth of 17.7% between 2020 and 2027. As for 3D technology, 97% of manufacturers think it will revolutionize their processes in sales and training.

Satoshi Shinada, General Partner of Kepple Africa Ventures commented, “Onboard spearheads a new era of manufacturing and assembly process with its unique approach to transforming the conventional paper manuals into 3D interactive experience. As an institutional investor from Japan, we are very excited to join the journey of Onboard and expand its innovation on a global scale.”

Karim Jouini, Founder and CEO of Expensya (a French scale-up) had these words to share about the round, “I am glad to join Onboard as Business Angel, I strongly believe in the mission Safwen and his team are tackling: make manuals useful again, and get them into 2021! The Onboard story reminds me of my own story in 2015”.