2019 has so far been a fulfilling year for tech start-ups in Nigeria, having raised $110.9m fund between January and June.
The funding rounds, which ranged from pre-seed, seed stage, Series A to C funding, debt financing, grants to angel investment, were used by most of the start-ups to expand their operations to other markets or scale their offerings.
In January this year, Crop2Cash, an agric-tech company raised $100,000 pre-seed round while Provider, an AI-powered food delivery firm, received $1,000 pre-seed funds from an angel investor, Rowland Eno.
Fintech firm, TeamApt, received $5.5m Series A fund from a number of investors led by a Nigerian venture capital company, Quantum Capital Partners.
In March 2019, CredPal raised a seed round of $150,000 from Y Combinator; Kudi, a digital payment start-up, got $5m Series A investment from a French venture capital, Partech. Also, Carbon (former Paylater) got $5m debt facility from OneFi; and Middletrust, an escrow service provider, also received $5,000 pre-seed investment from an undisclosed source.
Bitmama, a crypto-fiat exchange company, raised $25,000 pre-seed fund to scale its operations; and Greenage Technologies received $57,000 seed round from investors led by Genesys.
READ ALSO: How Power Ministry Official Forged Fashola’s Signature For Official Passport
In March, Farmcrowdy got $1m seed investment from Ajayi Solutions and two other investors; Schoolable, Wallet.ng, 54gene and Thrive Agric raised a total of $600,000 seed fund each from Y Combinator; and BuyCoins received $1.1m seed funds from an undisclosed source.
It was also gathered that in April, Schoolable and Eazyhire raised a total of $80,000 seed fund each from Founders Africa Factory; Boomplay got $20m Series A fund from Maison Capital and Seas Capital; and Jumia Group received $56m corporate round investment from MasterCard just before its Initial Public Offering on the New York Stock Exchange.
Aside from these, e-health zone, Space in Africa, Cowrywise, CredPal, Extramile Africa, Social Lender, Riby Finance, Capricorn Digital, Smart Teller, Tora Africa, and SeamlessHR also received some undisclosed funds.
In May, Gokada raised $5.3m Series A round from Rise Capital and three other investors; Mvxchange, a business-to-business maritime service firm, received $100,000 pre-seed investment from Neon Ventures and two others; Rucove, an agro-cross border trade firm, raised $10,000 pre-seed fund from an undisclosed source; and African Delivery Technologies got $230,000 seed fund from two investors.
Trove, a cryptocurrency start-up, also raised an undisclosed amount in May this year.
In June, findings indicated that PayDay Investor, a fintech firm, Asusu, Fint, Trove, Tsaron and Ogaranya received a total of N18m($50,072) from ARM Labs in Nigeria.
Anergy raised $9m Series A round from Breakthrough Energy Ventures and three other investors; ScholarX raised $100,000 pre-seed fund, and MDaaS Global received $1.1m seed round from investors led by Alitheia Capital.
During the period under review, Facebook-sponsored FbStart Accelerator programme gave a total of $400, 000 to Lara.ng, Vetsark, Treplabs, Gricd, UpNEPA, and Cycles.
EazyChange, a transport payment solution start-up, got $10,000 at a Wema Bank-sponsored Hackathon in March this year.