How Five Nigerian Tech Startups Raised $78m In First 38 Days Of 2022

Five Nigerian startups operating in the technology space have raised a combined amount of $78m in the first 38 days of this new year.

African startups had an extraordinary year in 2021 after raising about $5bn, outclassing the previous record of $4.3bn in 2020.

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Nigeria is the biggest beneficiary of seed rounds and other venture capital secured in the continent last year.

THE WHISTLER had reported that some firms last year raised over $1.125bn, due to the rush for African startups by foreigners.

Partech in its 2020 report had rated the top five countries in Africa in terms of attracting funding for startups as Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, South Africa and Ghana.

Nigeria also retained the top spot in 2021.

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One of such startups is Reliance Health. The firm is a health care startup founded in 2016 by three co-founders who want to redefine health insurance.

On February 7, the startup announced raising a $40m Series B round, the largest in African health tech. It was led by General Atlantic

Reliance Health uses software, data science and telemedicine to deliver health insurance services.

Femi Kuti, Opeyemi Olumekun and Matthew Mayaki are the founders of the Lagos- and Texas-based digital healthcare service provider.

Investment platform, Bamboo raised $15m in a new financing round. In January 2020, Richmond Bassey and Yanmo Omorogbe founded Bamboo an investment platform

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The investment firm is announcing that it has raised $15m in a new Series A round backed by Greycroft and Tiger Global.

SeamlessHR, a Nigerian tech startup raised $10m to expand its human resource and payroll solutions across Africa.

In January, the company which was founded in 2018 by Emmanuel Okeleji, the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technical Officer, Deji Lana said it raised $10m Series A funding led by TLcom Capital and other investors like Capria Ventures, Lateral Frontier Ventures, Enza Capital and Ingressive Capital participated.

ThankUCash is a Nigerian platform launched in 2018 by Connected Analytics as a multi-merchant loyalty and cashback platform that connects customers with businesses in a bid to help businesses grow and help customers to earn some cash on every purchase made.

The CEO Simeon Ononobi started the firm alongside Suraj Supekar, Madonna Ononobi and Harshal Gandole.

In January, the Lagos- based start-up revealed that it raised $5.3m to expand within the Nigerian market. It is currently eyeing the Federal Capital Territory and the Southern city of Port Harcourt. 500 Global and Unicorn Growth Capital co-led the seed round.

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Casava, a Nigerian digital insurance platform founded by Bode Pedro early February 2022 also raised $4m to make insurance affordable and accessible to Nigerians.

Casava is an offshoot of VisaCover, an insurance brokerage company founded in 2014 by Bode.

The company provided an alternative in the auto insurance market allowing weekly insurance payments instead of the yearly conventional payment.

The founder built Casava in 2019 and launched fully in April 2021 after it secured a license to provide affordable and accessible insurance products to Nigerians.

Startups in the Edutech space did not miss out as AltSchool which was launched in October 2021 raised $1m in pre-seed funding to scale-up in business.

AltSchool was founded by Chief Executive Officer Adewale Yusuf, Akintunde Sultan and Opeyemi Awoyemi.

The startup is an online school with a curriculum to improve/upskill non-technical people with technical and soft skills.

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