Despite 2021 being a tough year for businesses globally owing to the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact, start-ups in Africa’s biggest economy continued to show great promise, becoming increasingly instrumental in the new normal.
The Nigeria’s entrepreneurship ecosystem attracted $1.37 billion investment deals in 2021, highest on the continent, according to a compilation by thebigdeal.gumroad.com – an African startups deals database.
Tech and fin-tech businesses accounted for over 90 percent of the total deals for the period.
Yearly, we are seeing more innovative entrepreneurs providing solutions to societal problems, causing disruption in their sectors while creating jobs.
On this note, BusinessDay takes a look at some of these start-ups who will make some serious impact in the country’s entrepreneurship ecosystem in 2022 amid the omicron variant and difficult business environment.
Read Also: Meet five investors behind 2021 biggest funding in Nigerian startups
The criteria used in our assessment include, but not limited to, growth, social and economic impact, international recognition, expansion, structure of business, must be founded in less than five years, and potential for growth. The entrepreneurs are not in any particular order.
As a result, here are the 10 burgeoning entrepreneurs worth watching in 2022:
uLesson
Through many students were able to learn during the initial lockdown in Africa’s biggest economy to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.
uLesson – an ed-tech start-up founded by Sim Shagaya, founder of Konga and DealDey,is currently the leading ed-tech business for students as it allows users through its platform to experience a digitalised learning by taking lessons, mock exams, and access their performance through a well-detailed user-friendly dashboard.
Since it’s launched, uLesson has introduced new features. It recently launched a one-to-many live class feature with polls and leaderboards and a one-to-one live experience for DevKids, a coding class independent of the core uLesson platform.
DevKids has since been rolled back, though Shagaya said uLesson is making efforts to introduce the feature — which started as an experiment in teaching kids how to code and at some point made 30percent of the company’s revenues — into the uLesson platform by early 2022.
Before its establishment in February 2020, the ed-tech start-up has already secured over $3.1 million for its funding from TLcom Capital.
In January, the edutech startup raised a $7.5 million Series A funding from five investors and just recently closed a $15million Series B round a few weeks ago.
54gene
Abasi Ene-Obong left his role as a management consultant in the pharmaceutical sector in the US to Nigeria to build Africa’s first biobank.
It was founded by the young entrepreneur in July 2019 to unlock the African genome and improve the understanding of the world’s most genetically diverse population.
Ene-Obong and his team started from the very beginning as there were no blueprints for biobank on the continent.
54gene partners with hospitals and research institutions in African countries and with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to address the challenge of limited diverse genomics data, which may hold the key to medical discoveries and new healthcare solutions.
Backed by investors including Y Combinator, Fifty Years Ventures, Better Ventures, and KdT Ventures, 54gene aims to equilibrate healthcare for people of African origin while advancing the quality of medical care worldwide.
It recently launched its diagnostics subsidiary – 7RiverLabs – fitted with state of the art technology to offer healthcare providers and patients access to world-class, cost-effective, speedy, reliable and advanced molecular diagnostics. The business is looking radically to disrupt the $100billion global pharmaceutical industry.
Autochek
Autochek, an automotive technology company set out to transform the African automobile industry by creating a single marketplace for consumers’ automotive needs, from sourcing and financing to after-sales support and warranties.
Startup veteran Etop Ikpe, once of DealDey and Cars45, launched his new venture – Autochek – with a bang in September 2020, announcing the acquisition of automotive marketplaces Cheki Nigeria and Cheki Ghana, previously part of ROAM Africa’s portfolio of leading online marketplaces.
ROAM Africa, Cheki’s parent company, has transferred ownership and operational control to Autochek of its Nigeria and Ghana brands Autochek, and all Cheki Nigeria and Cheki Ghana outlets will be rebranded.
The auto-tech auto company recently closed a $13.1million seed funding round, coming after a year it raised a $3.4 million pre-seed funding round to help it grow its operations and develop its platform.
Also, it just launched the continent’s first online brand new car loans marketplace to further deepen its mobility.
DrugStoc
Getting quality medicines is not always easy in a developing country like Nigeria.
But the situation is gradually changing with the entry of DrugStoc, a multi-channel, cloud-based health pharmaceutical platform founded by Chibuzor Opara and Adham Yehia.
The platform exists to empower healthcare providers to fulfil their mandate for a healthier Africa. Opara’s DrugStoc seeks ways to improve access to pharmaceutical products and services.
Opara, managing partner and co-founder of DrugStoc, says the company exists to solve the problems of fragmented supply chain market, counterfeiting and in-transparent pricing.
Opara is a medical doctor and health economist. His co-founder Adham Yehia is an expert in health facilities management. Both of them met in the Netherlands while doing their post-graduate studies.
Sourcing drugs from DrugStoc is a simple process: You go on the platform, place an order and within 24 hours the products will be supplied, according to Opara. The platform offers a myriad of payment, credit and financing solutions which are adapted to the realities of the pharmaceutical supply chain in the country.
The drug firm works with over 800 pharmacies and with the Association of General and Private Medical Practitioners of Nigeria, which has over 2,000 registered members.
The firm deploys artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology to enhance its track and trace capability with a view to sanitising the system.
The growth of the company has been tremendous since 2017. So far, the amount of prescriptions through hospitals and pharmacies that the firm serviced in the last two years has exceeded two million.
Opara reminds Nigerians that DrugStoc’s products are not expensive because of the firm’s advantage of doing huge volumes.
Currently, DrugStoc is on an aggressive expansion plan to deliver quality pharmaceutical products to 100 million people within the country and has just closed a $4.4 million Series A funding for the expansion.
Eden
Traffic congestion in Lagos, Nigeria’s megacity, has become a nightmare for professionals, making it hard for them to cope with mundane tasks of home cleaning and laundry.
To change this for professionals, Eden has strategically positioned itself as the go-to platform for home service needs to help busy professionals take care of their cooking and domestic cleaning.
Eden is a home services app where individuals can schedule their food, laundry and cleaning services from their comfort.
Eden was co-founded in 2019 by Nadayar Enegesi, co-founder of Andela, and Prosper Otemuyiwa and Silm Momoh – ex-executives of Andela.
When the founders, ex-Andelans executives, launched the home service app two years ago, it raised some eyebrows.
At the time, founders were increasingly launching ventures in fintech, e-commerce and logistics, so it was surprising to see ex-Andelans executives choose to tackle a space many felt couldn’t be profitable for a tech company in Nigeria.
The startup recently raised a $1.4 million seed round to deepen its market penetration.
Edukoya
Edukoya is a free learning application that helps learners increase the success rate of examinations by providing unlimited practice questions, detailed solutions, and access to online tutors, etc.
Founded by Honey Ogundeyi, Edukoya became the second most downloaded education app in Nigeria following its launch in December 2021.
The start-up is currently in beta with plans to go live fully in 2022 to make high-quality instruction and content accessible and affordable to every student, expand its online curriculum content coverage and on-demand tutoring feature for secondary school learners.
It secured a $3.5 million in pre-seed funding which it will use to transition from beta to live launch, build its team and customer base. The company has offices in the United Kingdom and Nigeria.
Agricrop
Agricorp international is a Nigerian-based start-up that specializes in producing, processing, and exporting spices particularly ginger, the company was launched in November 2018 by Kenneth Obiajulu and Oyewale Omotimirin.
Agricorp has supported over 5,000 smallholder farmers with inputs and training on good agronomic practices.
It has built a 0.5MT per hour spice processing plant in Kaduna, Nigeria that produces value-added products for the export market.
It has also used its proprietary technology, Farmbase to register, aggregate, and pay farmers for produce sold.
In September 2021, the firm raised $17.5 million in Series A funding, which is expected to help boost its operations locally and globally. Altogether it has received a total funding amount of $17.8 million since its launch.
Mono
Mono is a tech company that provides businesses with access to high-quality financial data and direct bank payments via open banking platforms.
Launched in 2020 by Abdulhamid Hassan and Prakhar Singh, the company has successfully carried out over 200 million transactions, covered three countries across the African continent and has 1,200 developers and businesses building with their products.
Mono has 18 investors and has received seed funding worth $17.6 million with five funding rounds, starting with a pre-seed fund of $500,000 in September 2020.
The company plans to be in five African countries by 2022 utilizing its recent seed fund.
Moove
Moove was founded by Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi in 2019 and it commenced operations in June 2020. It is a Lagos-based mobility fintech company passionate about addressing vehicle financing and enabling people to afford vehicles of their choice in Africa.
Moove inserts its alternative credit-scoring technology onto ride-hailing and e-logistics platforms, which allows access to proprietary performance and revenue analytics of mobility entrepreneurs to underwrite loans.
Already the company has extended its operations to Nairobi, Kenya, and has the intention of reaching more African countries in the coming years.
The start-up has managed to raise a total of $68.2 million in funding with a total of 18 investors since its launch.
Payday
Payday is a platform created to provide swift payments systems for Africans within and beyond the continent. Its product offerings include sending and receiving money globally, getting paid by foreign employers and clients, issuing Virtual Mastercards, paying tuition and other fees abroad.
Founded in May 2021 by Favour Ori, Payday launched its beta test in June 2021 and proceeded with a cold launch in July. Within three weeks of launch, the platform successfully processed over $1.4 million in transactions
Payday is also used by foreign businesses such as TalentQL (TechStars), Tupelo, and a slew of others to pay their employees in Africa for a variety of services such as payroll, taxes, and compliance.
