SMEs in Nigeria fail within 5 years as a result of the unavailability of funds, poor business environment, unfavorable government policies, nevertheless some start-ups have been able to find a solid root against all odds.
Moreover, it is not as if they didn’t go through the difficulties or are still not been faced with one problem or the other, but one thing is common to them all, the passion to solve a problem, to change the way things are done and to make life easy for people.
Here are the lists of 10 start-up businesses that are making waves in the Nigerian business environment and across the world.
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PiggyVest (formerly Piggybank)
PiggyVest is one of the fastest growing start-up businesses in Nigeria with its community reaching over 195,000 registered individuals with over N1 billion monthly savings and has been a dominance voice in the fintech space in Nigeria. The company is set to encourage and provide platforms for savings culture to individuals as well as financial intelligence service for millennial. Like every other scalable start-up business, the company plans for more financial features to grow the platform and primed to reach more users across the continent and a focus to go global.
Paystack
This is yet another wonderful start-up business in Nigeria today and they are among the fastest growing. Also in the fintech space, Paystack now handles nearly 15% of all online payments in Africa’s largest economy, powering tens of thousands of businesses of all sizes including telcos, airlines, and government agencies. The company has a goal to scale and deepen its payments infrastructure in order to accelerate expansion across the continent.
Thrive Agric
The purpose of this start-up business is to increase interest in Agricultural practices by helping the farmers and would-be farmers source for funds. Since 2017, Thrive Agric has supported over 4,000 farmers with crowd-sourcing model and helped small-scale producers with access to funds, best practices and link up with buyers during harvest. They are currently among the 500 start-ups participating at the tech accelerator program of the Silicon Valley firm.
The Agric-tech company is pressing to scale through other African cities and provide farmer clients with expertise as well as fundraising.
Related Post: Starting a small business: 6 things you need to know
Mines.io
This is another highly impressive start-up business in terms of their achievement in the fintech space as they create a digital credit platform for emerging markets. Mines, a multi-million company have continued to grow in Africa with branches in South America and South-East Asia. The company is also planning to collaborate with credit institutions to drive financial access around the world.
Riby
Among the many start-up businesses in the fintech space, Riby has carved a niche for itself in providing financial intelligence service for cooperatives. Following its successful launch in Nigeria, Riby is looking to start operations in a few other African countries within the next one and half years.
The start-up business is targeting to push the direct adoption of the Riby Co-Banking application and USSD channels from its current 10,000 users to over 500,000 users. The new policy will aid its 8,000 Cooperatives and Trade Groups registered with over 2 million individuals.
LifeBank
Unlike the many start-up businesses in the health sector, LifeBank presents a rare service by helping to save lives through the availability of blood. On a mission to reduce the number of deaths linked to limited oxygen availability by improving oxygen distribution to hospitals through AirBank in a country where over half a million die annually due to hypoxemia.
Recently, the company won MIT Solve Global Challenge in the health category and looking to start on-demand delivery of oxygen monitoring equipment like pulse oximeters, routine, scheduled delivery of oxygen to replenish depleted hospital stock in Africa’s populous nation.
Kobo360
This is another great start-up business in Nigeria. It helps to simplify the process of sending and receiving goods and as well as safeguard them by building formidable networks. Kobo360’s aim is to build a global logistics operating system by upgrading its platform and expand operations to other African countries. By doing this, it plans to improve its physical presence throughout Nigeria by opening more hubs.
Estate Intel
This is another wonderful start-up business in terms of what they have been able to achieve in the real estate space with the aim of providing Africa’s largest commercial property database. Estate Intel is providing data for the commercial real estate sector in Nigeria through a web-based application for market participants.
Mobile Forms Africa
This is another uncommon start-up business in Nigeria. It helps to simplify the process of getting necessary data for effective business decision making. It is at the forefront of transforming data usage in Africa for local and international businesses.
Allpro
The purpose of this start-up business is to ensure inclusive education for all through its education financing and management. Allpro is working to addressing the challenges (funding majorly), affecting education in Nigeria by providing funds through access to loans. It is an everywhere lending platform for schools in Nigeria by offering credit risks for lenders while making credit easily accessible for various stakeholders in the school ecosystem (Proprietor, parents, and teachers).
The above list is our pick of start-ups business in Nigeria making a difference. However, we believe they are more businesses in Nigeria creating solutions and helping people. Let us know what you think in the comment section.
