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Nigerian startups brace for multi-million dollar expansion

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With this new funding the startup plans to expand to Eastern and Southern Africa

 

Two of Nigeria’s numerous startups are currently bracing to expand their activities with as much as $8.5 million with one raising $7.5 million and other $1 million.

 

Accordung to a report on the development, Nigeria’s edtech startup, uLesson, has raised $7.5 million Series

 

A funding for Africa expansion. Also, Echelon Capital has announced plans to inject $1 million in funding in Nigerian tech startups beginning February 2021. On the part of uLesson, the new round was led by Owl Ventures, with inclusion from existing investors, TLcom Capital and Founder Collective and participation from new investor LocalGlobe.

Tory Patterson, Managing Director of Owl Ventures, will also join the uLesson board, further strengthening the education startup’s push to deliver affordable, high-quality and accessible education across Africa using technology.

 

uLesson allows learners to experience personalised learning, practice tests, region-specific mock tests and assessed performance and progress for students and parents, including rich reporting dashboards for detailed analysis.

 

It is tailored towards the WAEC curriculum region (Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Gambia), with its current content focuses on core subjects of Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology for secondary school students. uLesson has scaled quickly to 1 million app downloads since its launch in March 2020.

 

According to uLesson Founder and CEO, Sim Shagaya, “Africa is not one place. Different needs, cultures and curricula mean that uLesson has to carefully and deliberately think about how to design products and distribution channels to serve such a vast market. Almost daily we receive emails from families across the continent asking us to make services available to them.

 

And in 2021, we will.” With this new funding the startup plans to expand to Eastern and Southern Africa. It will also launch a host of new products including a new pan-African primary school library, 1:1 tutoring sessions and Challenge – its new app feature that allows learners to challenge friends to a quiz. “Owl Ventures is honoured to be partnering with uLesson for their Series A.

 

The company has quickly grown into the premier platform supporting students in Africa and we are excited to support their global expansion, as they seek to empower students around the world.”

 

Tory Patterson, Managing Director of Owl Ventures said. Meanwhile, Echelon Capital, which invests pre-seed funds in exceptional African startup founders with capital- efficient businesses that leverage technology to scale globally, also announced that it has plans to invest millions of dollars into startups in Africa over the next ten years.

 

“One thing that gives my team and I joy is that founders who are prepared, built capacity and have positioned their businesses properly will  need to worry less about accessing funding,” Echelon Capital founder, Sunday Olorunsheyi, said. Sunday is a successful international business leader with experience spanning over 20 years building businesses in different sectors of the economy.

 

He is the co-founder of Pertinence Group, which began its operation in 2012 and is now a multi-billionnaira business. He also sits on the board of 12 companies, including Globarel Group. For more than five years,

 

Sunday Olorunsheyi has written cheques to about 20 successful startups. Echelon Capital VC is sector- agnostic and looks out for both tech and non-tech startups.

 

According to Olorunsheyi, Echelon Capital is on the lookout for startups with outstanding products, a strong team, capital efficiency, execution strategy, and profits. Commenting on the future of startups in Nigeria,

 

Sunday said decentralized investments will take over as individuals leverage startup funding platforms to make direct investments.

 

He also noted that there will huge demand for crowdfunding platforms adding that more people will leverage them to invest in infrastructures that could help SMEs scale globally. Interested startup founders can sign up through the website and participate in a virtual accelerator programme

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