According to Disrupt Africa’s Startup Funding reports for 2018, it was discovered that Nigerian startups led the majority of investment in Africa with about 58 startups amassing a total sum of $94.9 million from different sources.
Following the success story and steps of Flutterwave, Andela and a host of others in Africa, the likes of Farmcrowdy, Paystack, and PiggyBank made waves in the startup space in 2018 with Fintech being the foremost in the fundraising noise.
But which of the upcoming startups is looking to shake Nigerian landscape and at the verge of becoming market leaders in their region?
A lot of venture capital investors, tech experts, and mentors in Nigeria are pretty excited about these startups and their ideas.
These startups are from Edutech, Fintech, Health, Logistics, Agritech and they’re passionate about what they represent and the ways they’ll impact the Nigerian economy.
Here’s a list of Nigerian based startups, that got funding in 2018.
Piggyvest
| Founder | Odunayo Eweniyi, Somto Ifezue, and Joshua Chibueze |
| VC | Village Capital, VilCap Investments, Ventures Platform, and Leadpath Nigeria. |
| Sector | Fintech |
| Funding | $1.2 Million |
| What it does | Financial/Savings Intelligence For Millennials |
| Why it’s booming in 2019 | PiggyVest formerly known as PiggyBank has been an authority in the Fintech space in Nigeria and it has grown its community to more than 195,000 registered clienteles with over one billion Naira savings every month |
Paystack
| Founders | Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi |
| VC | Tencent and Y Combinator, Visa, Stripe, Ventures Platform, and Comcast Ventures |
| Sector | Fintech |
| Funding | $11.7 million |
| What it does | Payment for Africa |
| Why it’s booming in 2019 | Paystack has powered tens of thousands of businesses of all size including airlines, government agencies, and telcos. They’ve also grown to process almost 15% of all online payments in Nigeria and Africa’s largest economy. |
Thrive Agric
| Founder | Ayodeji Arikawe |
| VC | Ventures Platform |
| Sector | Agritech |
| Funding | $225,000 |
| What it does | Crowdsourcing investments in agriculture |
| Why it’s booming in 2019 | From 2017 till date, Thrive Agric has helped over 4,000 farmers with crowdsourcing model and small-scale producers with best practices, access to finance, and linking up of buyers during harvest. |
LifeBank
| Founder | Temie Giwa Tubosun |
| VC | Co-Creation Hub Nigeria, EchoVC Partners, and Fola Laoye |
| Sector | Healthtech |
| Funding | $225,000 |
| What it does | Saving lifes through the availability of blood |
| Why it’s booming in 2019 | LifeBank aims to reduce the number of death associated with limited oxygen availability by enhancing oxygen dissemination to hospitals via AirBank in countries where over 500,000 people die every year due to hypoxemia. |
Kobo360
| Founders | Obi Ozor and Ife Oyedele II |
| VC | TLcom Capital Partners, International Finance Corporation, Y Combinator, Verod Capital Management, Oded David ‘O.D.’ Kobo, and Western Technology Investment |
| Sector | Logistics |
| Funding | $7.3 million |
| What it does | Logistics in Nigeria |
| Why it’s booming in 2019 | Kobo360 aims to build a universal logistics operating system by improving its platform and expanding operations to Togo, Ghana, and Cote D’Ivoire. |
If you’ve got any question or contribution, please do leave a comment below. We’d be eager to hear from you.
