With 190 million people, Nigeria most likely to give birth to unicorns - Forbes Africa
19 Dec 2018 4:30 AM GMT
Africa?s most populous country is the biggest startup market most likely to give birth to unicorns. But capital and infrastructure to help these startups scale remain elusive. The year 2018 was momentous for Staffbus.ng, a two-year-old startup helping solve the problem of congestion in Nigeria?s capital city. Its solution? Encouraging residents to leave their cars [?]
- Africa’s most populous country is the biggest startup market most likely to give birth to unicorns.
- Founded by Olusegun Oludayo, the startup was recently the winner of the N5 million ($13,700) Seyi Tinubu Empowerment Project (STEP) initiative, a pitching competition held annually in Lagos to identify leading tech entrepreneurs.
- According to a 2017 report by Global Startup Ecosystem Report and Ranking 2017, produced by Startup Genome in collaboration with the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN), the Lagos startup ecosystem is estimated to be worth $2 billion.
- As the business models of these startups become more innovative, there has also been an increase in the number of companies receiving big checks from top Silicon Valley VC’s in recent years.
- For example, the significant funding rounds of Andela ($40million), Terragon Group ($5 million), Cars45 ($5 million), Rensource ($3.5million), Flutterwave ($10 million), Paystack ($1.3 million) has demonstrated that there is definitely a lot of potential in the Nigerian ecosystem but these are just a few success stories and are atypical to the entire ecosystem.
- Deloitte says consumers in Britain are enjoying record pre-Christmas price cuts, with discounts at an average of 43.6 percent and likely to hit a new record by Christmas Eve.
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