Startups
In nearly a decade, hundreds of entrepreneurs have emerged with innovative startups across the African continent. We provide insights on their experiences and highlight the activities of investors who fund them.
Top stories
Hotel reservation startup, Hotels.ng, has secured an investment of $1.2 million from international investors EchoVC and Omidyar Network. This is the startup’s first investment funding round, following a 2013 seed investment of $225,000 from Jason Njoku’s Spark.ng. Started in 2012, Hotels.ng now covers over 7,000 hotels across 21 regions in Nigeria, with over a million hotel searches on the platform to date. “We’re…
The founders of Ratio, the duo of Olanrewaju Jawando and Bowale Joseph, over the week shared their aspirations and take on the approach that the one-month old company is taking improve the currency exchange industry in the country. Launched on April 28, 2015, Ratio is definitely the youngest startup on our weekly series. However, despite being…
In case you probably have had a terrible experience in the past trying to use one of the numerous online classifieds marketplace as a buyer, such experience might be a thing of the past with Efritin.com. Over the week I tried selling my Smile MiFi and I got a call, not from a buyer but…
Popular eCommerce website, Konga.com will be down for 5 days from the 28th of May to 1st of June, 2015 and it won’t be due to server downtime. As it turns out, Konga has a Big App Sales promotion in the works in a bid to aggressively promote its mobile app. According to our source,…
If you get a “yes” on most of these, your startup idea probably isn’t as great as you think it is
Over the week, I had the opportunity to chat with the duo of Dapo Ademosu and Taiwo Banasko, founders of CityRun. They shared their experience as one of the youngest players in the logistics industry in Nigeria, the challenges and future aspirations. In the beginning “eCommerce seems to be what’s going on in Nigeria now,…
Applications are now open for the African Entrepreneurship Award (AEA), the competition sponsored by The Moroccan Commercial bank BMCE Bank, reports Disrupt Africa. We seek all Africans, around the world, who want to create jobs and improve lives in Africa. Is it hard? Yes! Do we believe this is the best way forward for Africa? Yes! BMCE…
In what is reported by Disrupt Africa to be the largest acquisition of a tech startup in Kenya so far, Financial Technology startup, Weza Tele was acquired by financial services giant, AFB for $1.7 million. Weza Tele is an international company that provides multiple value-added solutions across commerce, supply chain, distribution and mobile payment integration;…
Yesterday at CcHUB we had our community day, it’s a day for sharing ideas with each other and learning some necessary lessons about our tech landscape. While the entire lesson for the day was great and all, there was a particular sub-topic that struck a chord with me, and it was about ‘selling your idea.’…
So I’m just going to go ahead and say what everyone is thinking: Rocket Internet is in absolutely everything these days. Along with its ability to give companies quirky, yet appropriate names, Rocket Internet has perfect the art of launching clone companies. Rocket Internet has just unveiled Vendito (Latin for Hawk or Sell), an online…
Yoruba101, the Yoruba teaching app, released by Genii Games’ Asa brand of African culture is targeted at kids in order to promote the African culture among them through mobile technology.But, and I’m looking at all of you English-speaking 21 and 22 year olds, that cannot speak Yoruba, everyone should get in touch with their culture.…
Here are 4 projects by the African Dev Community that really got us talking and we believe you will find interesting: Cruncher At the top of the list is Cruncher, an app made with Ruby on Rails and Angular to “make sense”/ analyse your GTB transaction statement. Maybe you can find out what you’ve been…
“When you are small, don’t rely on your strength, rely on your creativity.” This week, we will be taking a trip into the world of Faaji Hub, checking out how the event vendors’ listing platform is looking to take over the world. There exists a need for party planners who want to have access to a wide…
As Megan E. Holstein put it, if you can’t explain your solution’s comparative advantage in a short period and clearly, you’re already at a disadvantage. So the question is ‘how best can you give a one-sentence pitch?’ As a follower of Techpoint, you probably would know about the Startup of the Week series, a weekly…
The Co-creation Hub (CcHUB) announced on Monday that three (3) new ventures have been admitted into its Incubation program. The startups will each receive seed funding ($15,000 – $25,000), mentoring, business development support and office space critical to their quest to find repeatable business models that can rapidly grow their business. Grit Systems is an…
I’m seriously tired of how easily Nigerians seem to disregard property rights laws (I feel like Linda Ikeji is to blame, but that’s another story). Today we got to witness another evidence of how bad it has gotten with popular food blog, 9jaFoodie calling out food delivery service, Hellofood for the same crime (yes, it’s a crime)…
The African tech industry is growing rapidly. Technology has enabled people on the continent solve problems like financial inclusion and facilitated trade through e-commerce. Africa has a wealth of young entrepreneurs who are hustling to turn their dreams into reality. African entrepreneurs however face common avoidable challenges such as high costs of power generation, internet,…
Preparations for the 2015 edition of DEMO Africa which will hold in Lagos, this year, are intensifying. The event dates have been confirmed as 24th and 25th of September at the Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos. DEMO Africa has now announced that this year’s edition of the DEMO Africa startup event will once…
Look, hiring by social media is upon us. First, It was Mark Essien’s genius quizzes; next we had Sim Shagaya asking people to go bug searching through the Konga iOS and Android app, and now we have Jason Njoku of IrokoTV announcing that IrokoTV is hiring and he would give N1 million to the highest…
The introduction of GSM into Nigeria can be termed one of the nation’s biggest achievements in the last 20 years. With GSM came improved internet penetration and consequentially mobile/internet based businesses such as online gambling, internet banking and eCommerce. The eCommerce sector has seen tremendous growth in the last 4 years with big players like…