Entrepreneur plans to raise €1m in pre-seed investment

TALLAGHT entrepreneur Emmanuel “Smiley” Osungboun, founder of Gontrel, has announced plans to raise €1 million in pre-seed investment.

Smiley has announced the plans to raise a million as he looks to accelerate growth across Ireland and international markets for the Gontrel restaurant discovery platform, which is based out of WorkIq Innovation Centre on Belgard Square North.

The entrepreneur was previously a well-known drummer in the Dublin music scene that performed across the world.

Gontrel is a platform which replaces traditional restaurant search with short-form video content, allowing its users to discover restaurants through creator-led videos connected directly to menus, locations and booking functionality.

The app has reached number one on the Irish App Store on three separate occasions and successfully completed an initial funding round, raising €90k to bring the platform to market, and now sights are set on larger funds to be gathered.

Speaking about his journey, Smiley said: “Growing up in Tallaght gave me something invaluable – resilience.

“I didn’t come from a traditional technology background, and I certainly didn’t have a roadmap for building a startup. What I did have was the determination to keep going.

“The same mindset that helped me build a career in music is what helped me build Gontrel.”

The company is currently running a creator beta programme across Dublin and is building a strong library of content, with plans to have more than 5,000 restaurant videos live by September.

As Gontrel prepares for its next phase of growth software engineers and technology talent are being recruited to join the team.

Smiley noted that the team are

“focused on building something much bigger” as they look to the future.

“We kept going until we had a product. We kept going until we found believers. We kept going until we hit number one on the App Store.

“Now we’re focused on building something much bigger.”