5 Nigerian startups you should pay attention to in 2018

Nigerian startups have shown doggedness in their quest to solve problems in the country as more keep springing almost on a daily basis.

here are 5 Nigerian startups you shouldn’t take your eyes off as 2018 creeps on.

Monapay

Monapay, a fintech startup, launched in 2017 intends to go unconventional with how online payment is made. The founder, Hugo Obi thought it might be easier to pay for digital products using airtime than undergoing the stress of using credit/debit cards. If you’ve ever had to punch in your card number, CVV, expiry date and other details usually demanded to make online transactions, then you might agree with him.

Monapay was born, almost at the same instant that thought crossed Hugo’s mind. The solution is simple; to serve as an airtime payment solution for digital content providers in Nigeria. Here’s why Monapay deserves attention. From the creation of the account on the website to adding products and integrating the system, there’s something Monapay promotes more than anything else — ease of payment.

ThriveAgric

Thrive Agric “gives you the opportunity to fund a farm, empower farmers, learn practical agricultural tips and share the harvest”. Obviously, Thrive Agric is a welcome development and has given a major boost to farmers in its operations scope. The startup acts more like a middleman servicing farmers and individuals interested in investing in farming.

For individuals, it allows easy and insured investment with a promise of 23% ROI in less than a year. While farmers get access to the funding needed to embark on their farming operations.

 

Dropque

According to the founder, Opeyemi Akinwoleola, the recruitment software saves up to 50% of the time spent on recruitment, both for candidates and employers. Dropque’s interface allows recruiters to send video, file or text-based interviews to prospective candidates, whose responses are sent to recruiter’s dashboard for easy shortlisting and collaborative assessments with other members of the recruitment team.

 

FarmCrowdy

Owning a farm without necessarily having a farmland might sound impossible. But not to Onyeka Akumah, founder/CEO of FarmCrowdy. Onyeka is one of the few founders, who have personal connections with their startups.

FarmCrowdy was born in 2017 as a digital and crowd-funded agricultural platform that empowers farmers in Nigeria. The startup opportunes individuals to sponsor agricultural produce of their choice and get returns within a year. Obviously, FarmCrowdy was a welcome development. While many jumped at the chance of having insured investments, it has provided a system that now enables a lot of farmers in rural areas.

In August, FarmCrowdy emerged the first and only African startup selected by Techstars Atlanta to undergo its accelerators programme with $120,000 in funding. As it turns out, that was only the beginning. Another funding round followed just in December. FarmCrowdy secured its seed round of $1 million from Techstars Atlanta and other international investors.

What FarmCrowdy intends to do with the recently secured funding is particularly what ignites interest. The plans are to extend services across 20 states in Nigeria, work with 4,000 more farmers, and engage tens of thousands of new followers and sponsors. These plans beat its current record of 1, 000 farm sponsors and about 2,000 small-scale farmers. Obviously, a lot is set to happen with FarmCrowdy this year.  You should definitely stay tuned.

QuickCheck

QuickCheck is another Nigerian fintech Startup that aims to provide banking services to the underserved. The term “underserved” in this context refers to neither feature phone users nor the financially-excluded. Even among the estimated 20 million smartphone/mobile app users in Nigeria, there’s a huge number that is dissatisfied with the banking services given by direct Nigerian bank apps. The fact is, even smartphone users haven’t been fully served.

For instance, Zoto has been able to provide airtime recharge services in a different way, and Paylater is a mobile app that gives loans to users and claims to process about 1,000 loan orders on a daily basis (no banking app does at the moment). Currently, QuickCheck has its core in the combination of both; giving out instant loans to users and airtime recharge.

But unlike Paylater and Zoto, QuickCheck is working on other products, which are currently in the pipeline.

The Seedstars-backed fintech startup will, in addition to its loan and airtime recharge services, make available debit cards and allow users access to unlimited bank accounts via one mobile app. The latter is particularly interesting. It is said that an average Nigerian has at least 2 bank accounts. This implies at least 2 different bank apps on one’s mobile phone.

On one hand, QuickCheck’s intended solution might take away the stress of having to open series of banking apps to access one’s multiple accounts. On another, would it be the end of using direct mobile banking applications?