On July 2, 2025, Techpoint Africa reported that Nigerian fintech, Okra, had shut down, following CEO, Fara Ashiru’s exit from the company.
Since then, speculation has been rife regarding the manner of the company’s shutdown. Speaking to Techpoint Africa, Ashiru shed more light on the company’s shutdown and the reasons behind it.
According to her, the startup still had three years of runway, which it will now return to its investors. Ashiru declined to comment on the amount to be returned. While Okra has not given the exact amount that would be returned to investors, it can be inferred.
Given that the company raised a total of $16.5 million and operated for five years, it likely spent around 60 to 75% of its funding, roughly $11 to $12.5 million, as most early-stage startups typically raise enough for 18–24 months of runway.
That would leave an estimated $4 million to $5.5 million unspent. Assuming most of this balance remained after providing severance and bonuses to staff, it’s reasonable to infer that investors could have received between $4 million and $5 million back.
This is not the first time an African startup has decided to return investor funds after winding down operations. In 2024, fintech startup Thepeer announced it would wind down and return investor funds. However, investors demanded an audit after the startup was going to return $500,000 instead of $1.6 million.
While the startup only announced $4.5 million in total funding, Ashiru noted that the startup raised an additional $12 million led by Base 10 in 2022. Furthermore, sources close to the matter claim that Nebula has been shut down, but Okra might be able to find a new home.
In addition to returning capital to investors, Okra provided employees with generous severance packages dependent on how long they had been with the company. Older employees reportedly received up to six months’ worth of their salaries with bonuses provided for some who had not spent too long with the startup.
Ashiru also shed more light on Nebula, Okra’s cloud product that was meant to offer African businesses a cheaper cloud alternative.
She said some companies had begun using Nebula, but they weren’t relying on it for mission-critical services. That made long-term adoption and the path to revenue uncertain.
“This was a bold one and showed early promise, but the speed of adoption simply wasn’t fast enough. Moving forward would have meant raising more capital and extending our timeline significantly — something I didn’t feel was responsible without stronger commercial pull,” she shared with Techpoint Africa.
Framed against the backdrop of increased calls for data sovereignty, Nebula’s shutdown reveals the intricacies of local startups going against the likes of Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud. A key consideration for most businesses is the switching costs and possible implications for their operations, something Nebula came up against in its short lifetime.
Shutting down the business has thrown up doubts about the viability of the cloud infrastructure market, but she insists that older businesses still have a fighting chance.
Essentially, Okra’s decision to wind down was not driven by a funding crunch. Rather, it was a conscious choice to shut down early and return capital, rather than continue operating with limited traction in a tough market.
Ashiru has since resumed a new role as Head of Engineering at British startup Kernel and maintains that she only reentered the job market after properly winding down operations at Nebula.
