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On April 16, Uganda-based two-wheel ride-hailing platform SafeBoda announced that it had completed 1 million rides in Ibadan, a southwestern city in Nigeria. The company, which first launched in Uganda, is disrupting the offline market of local motorcycles referred to as boda-bodas in Uganda and okadas in Nigeria.
Remedial Health has secured $1 million in pre-seed funding to digitize pharmacies and stem the supply of fake and substandard pharmaceutical products, starting with Nigeria before expanding to the rest of Africa. Other notable startups in the space are Kenya’s MyDawa, Ghana’s mPharma and Nigeria’s DrugStoc.
that creates digital banks in emerging markets, confirmed to TechCrunch today that it has raised $7.4 Digital banks, neobanks, challenger banks or whatever you may call them, are among the biggest recipients of VC investments in fintech. In terms of the credit product, we see an opportunity for a “mass credit card” in Nigeria.
Kuda , the challenger bank based in Nigeria and the U.K., has joined the ranks of tech companies in Africa that are pruning their workforce. The news of the layoffs, which was first disclosed to TechCrunch by sources, was confirmed by Kuda via email, saying it laid off less than 5% of its 450-strong workforce, or about 23 people.
India, with 32 startups, is the second-largest demographic represented in the new batch, while Nigeria is third, having delivered 18 startups. Location : Lagos, Nigeria. Location : Lagos, Nigeria. ” Founders : Henry Mascot started a company in 2017 to help hospitals digitize records. Location : Lagos, Nigeria.
The process of digitizing the operations of mom and pop stores in Nigeria is serious business right now. Today’s news is from Alerzo , a little-known B2B e-commerce retail startup based in Ibadan, Nigeria. Omnibiz gets $3M to digitizeNigeria’s informal B2B supply chain. The company is announcing a $10.5
The number of POS terminals in Nigeria grew from 150,000 in 2017 to 543,000 in April 2021, according to Statista. In Nigeria, POS terminals are used to process card payments at retail locations as well as for agency banking purposes, a branchless banking system where agents act like human ATMs.
Nigeria has more than 12 million registered vehicles , and approximately 90% of them are used cars that need frequent checkups to prevent recurring breakdowns. Given this number, one would expect effective vehicle maintenance to be standard in Nigeria. million seed round. .
Agency banking is big business in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa. Founded by Olaoluwa Awojoodu , the company’s agent banking platform, PayCentre Africa, is present in Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Togo. ” In Nigeria, over 42 million adults who live in rural areas lack basic banking services. .
Nigeria has an average of 4.8 “ When you look at most of the successful companies in Nigeria, they all had to build some sort of offline distribution.”. Typically , more than 200,000 agents across Nigeria refinance their working capital by taking long walks to the banks or the fintechs they work for like TeamApt.
Today, Africa’s largest digital payments network MFS Africa joins the fray. However, a presence in Africa’s largest market, Nigeria, remained elusive for the company. T hat changed last month when it acquired Baxi , an agent banking platform developed by Capricorn Digital. MFS Support Team.
” The company, founded in 2018, had an exclusive presence in Nigeria before last year. While the company started with providing customers with digital services in their everyday life from mobility and logistics to e-commerce and fintech at cheap rates, those super app plans have been largely underwhelming.
Nigeria’s informal trade sector, worth over $244 billion, has more than 40 million micro, small and medium businesses. Most of these businesses operated offline until a few years ago when startups brought about digitization by providing infrastructure and a gamut of e-commerce and financial services.
A new report from Endeavor Nigeria reveals that Africa’s digital economy and tech ecosystem is set to experience exponential growth periods. The report is dubbed “The Inflection Point: Africa’s Digital Economy is Poised to Take Off.”. Africa’s digital opportunity. By 2030, Africa is expected to have a total of $2.5
A couple of digital freight companies are tackling this problem, like Nigerian-based MVX. What followed was the launch of MVXtransit, a digital freight booking platform, helping cargo owners find deals on moving containers across Nigeria. Japan, Nigeria, and South Africa also participated. Some angel investors in the U.S.,
OZÉ , a Ghanaian fintech startup that provides digital recordkeeping tools with embedded finance products to medium and small businesses, has raised a $3 million pre-Series A round. But also really pushing towards what’s possible for business owners in Ghana and Nigeria, who has a smartphone in their pocket.”.
There’s no shortage of digital banks in Nigeria and, in general, in Africa. In the latest development, Umba , a digital banking platform operating in Lagos, Nigeria, has raised $15 million in Series A funding. Umba, a digital bank for emerging markets, raises $2M Seed funding to expand across Africa.
There’s no end to digitizing the operations of small and medium businesses (SMBs) in the traditional retail sector across sub-Saharan Africa. In Nigeria alone, this industry, worth more than $200 billion, consists of over 40 million businesses of varying sizes, according to reports. Image Credits: Pastel.
The onset of the pandemic has led to increased demand for digital banking options across customer income groups around the world. We’ve seen how digital banks like Zolve and Nubank have raised money in recent months to fill this need. TymeBank , a South African digital bank, announced today that it has secured an R1.6
FMCG distributors can onboard retailers in their network on the Duplo platform, collect payments digitally and access real-time insights into business performance. And then it becomes easier for us to digitize how payment moves between retailers and distributors,” he added. pre-seed to build financial OS for B2B companies in Nigeria.
Bento , Nigeria’sdigital payroll and human resource management platform is expanding to Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda with plans to set up operations in six other markets in Africa over the next one year. In its next phase of expansion, Bento is eyeing Egypt, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Angola and Ethiopia by the end of next year.
Underserved communities often face unique challenges when accessing and harnessing digital technologies. Underserved communities often face unique challenges when accessing and harnessing digital technologies. However, opportunities can emerge from developing the digital economy in these communities.
In Nigeria, some go to the extent of keeping information offhand. Most of these features are geared at onboarding a wide range of businesses in Nigeria to the platform; however, the strategy is to introduce credit and other financial services to them. The company claims that merchants who use Kippa this way “recover debts 3x faster.”.
The digital bank has seen some success since launching in Nigeria in 2019. Nigeria is sub-Saharan’s largest inbound remittance market and among the top 10 largest globally. to Nigeria remains invariably expensive. — the second largest sender of remittances to Nigeria, behind the U.S.,
OPay also claims to process about 80% of bank transfers among mobile money operators in Nigeria and 20% of the country’s non-merchant point of sales transactions. With the money OPay has raised so far, i t’s quite surprising that the country until last year December was only present in Nigeria.
However , it has expanded its pay-as-you-go model to include other needs: smartphones (launched in Kenya two years ago), TVs, refrigerators, solar lighting and digital financial services such as cash loans and health insurance. Ex-SafeBoda executive Babajide Duroshola joins M-KOPA to lead expansion into Nigeria.
Lagos- and Texas-based digital healthcare provider Reliance Health is the latest beneficiary and is doing so in grand style, raising $40 million. Kuti’s comments highlight critical issues with healthcare in Nigeria: accessibility and affordability. The Series B round is the largest of its kind in African healthtech. “So
Stephen Deng, the co-founder and partner of DFS Lab, a firm that invests in digital commerce startups, serially compared the 2016 Southeast Asia funding landscape to where Africa might be in 2021, at $3 billion. Digital payments gateway MFS Africa is one of Africa’s few corporate investors and acquirers. billion and $2.8
Nigeria remains a largely cash-dominated country. Today, Bankly , a Nigerian fintech startup digitizing cash for the unbanked, announced that it has closed a $2 million seed round. What Bankly has done is to digitize their whole process of collating money and allow these unbanked people to save using online and offline methods.
Startups have sought to use technology to digitize processes in Africa’s B2B e-commerce and retail space over the past couple of years. Duplo , a Lagos-based fintech, is attempting to tackle these inefficiencies by digitizing payment flows for B2B companies, starting with those in this industry. Here’s why this is a critical problem.
While Africa’s health systems are still reeling from the effects of the COVID pandemic, the adoption of digital health services has been revved in some countries. These startups digitize the supply chain and distribution to providers. “The However, a particular segment has achieved scale faster within the past year.
Before Dash, Boampong was the co-founder of OMG Digital, a YC-backed Ghanaian media startup he started alongside Jesse Ghansah — the current CEO of Float — in 2016. . In total, it has processed over $1 billion since its launch in 2020 from 1 million customers the company has acquired from Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, Boampong said.
Three years after launching its mobile lending service in Nigeria , the company set up shop in India , Asia’s second-most populous country in August 2020. Before expanding, FairMoney experienced exponential growth in Nigeria in terms of loans disbursement. FairMoney has come a long way since its Nigeria launch in 2017.
Nigeria has a population of almost 200 million, with 60% under the age of 25. But when it comes to being a software engineer or digital skills, you really don’t,” said the CEO. “We The company is also exploring B2B partnerships with private schools in Nigeria and Africa, using AltSchool’s curriculum in their classes.
The digital banking space in Africa is taking shape as neobanks on the continent grow in numbers like their global counterparts. Leading with a credit-led approach— which several digital banks across Africa such as Carbon , FairMoney have adopted—was a great customer acquisition tool for the company, he said. With over 1.2
His experience from this activity, coupled with working as a technical adviser to the vice president’s office in Nigeria a couple of months back, led him to launch Norebase , a trade tech startup that has raised $1 million in a pre-seed round. The service, which is only available for incorporating businesses in Nigeria, the U.S.
With a focus on Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Mexico and India, selected startups receive £80,000 (~$100,000) in grant capital, six months of support and connections with follow-on investors. However, the selected six startups this year are from Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.
Our software digitizes the process of those who write things in hand and helps them figure out their inventory management and recipe yields.”. Futi said Orda has witnessed tremendous adoption among small restaurants in its two markets, Nigeria and Kenya, and claims the startup might have reached product-market fit already.
This strategic acquisition will expand Smile Identity’s footprint across Africa and solidify its position as the continent’s leading identity verification and digital KYC provider, a part of the statement read. We have product depth in Nigeria already.
Kippa said the investment will allow it to develop financial products that help SMEs grow their businesses and grow its team in Nigeria. As such, startups have launched various bookkeeping solutions to digitize operations of these small businesses in a traditional retail sector worth more than $200 billion alone in Nigeria.
Startups digitizing B2B e-commerce and retail in Africa continue to grab the headlines after the pandemic paved the way for widespread offline retail and commerce disruption. TradeDepot , a Nigeria- and U.S.-based A large majority of small and medium-sized businesses in Nigeria and across Africa are offline.
million in a pre-Series A round, to tap the opportunities in emerging markets, where digital lending apps have recently sprung up in droves. This is as it grows beyond Nigeria, where it started operations in August 2020 before entering Kenya in July last year. “We million, having realized $800,000 in a seed round last May.
of its adult population had one form of insurance policy in Nigeria as of 2018. The self-described “Nigeria’s first 100% digital insurance company” has raised a $4 million pre-seed round. The digital insurance platform currently provides cover for health and job loss. In the news today is one such company: Casava.
million in 2016, it was one of the largest disclosed rounds at that stage in Nigeria. . Nigeria’s Kuda raises $10M to be the mobile-first challenger bank for Africa. Digital lenders remain one of their most important customers for fintech API startups. When Stripe-subsidiary Paystack raised its seed round of $1.3
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