Nigeria’s CcHub acquires Kenya’s iHub to create mega Africa incubator

Two of Africa’s powerhouse tech incubators will join forces. Nigerian innovation center and seed-fund CcHub has acquired Nairobi based iHub — CcHub CEO Bosun Tijani confirmed to TechCrunch.

The purchase amount is undisclosed, but Tijani said CcHub will finance the deal out of its real-estate project to build a new 10 story innovation center to replace its Herbert Macaulay Way building in Lagos.

Details are emerging on how the two entities will operate together, but Tijani noted some degree of autonomy.

“The names will stay the same…iHub  will remain iHub…it is a strong brand…but iHub  will be supported from the central CcHub, which will help them strengthen what they do,” he said.

Per the acquisition, Tijani becomes CEO of both organizations, while Nekesa Were continues as iHub Managing Director. iHub’s existing programs will remain, according to Tijani, but CcHub will extend some of its existing activities in education, healthcare, and governance to Kenya.

CcHub will also use the iHub addition to expand its investment scope. “We’ll now have access to pipeline in Nigeria, Kenya,  and Rwanda,” he said.

Tijani views the arrangement as a boost to the continent’s tech ecosystem. “It strengthens our ability to support innovation. iHub and CcHub…coming together makes us stronger; it gives us a chance to attract greater resources and talent,” he said.

The acquisition joins two of the Africa’s most recognized tech hubs. These innovation spaces, accelerators, and incubators—which tally 618 per GSMA stats—have become focal points for startup formation, training, and IT activity on the continent.

There aren’t official rankings for Africa’s most powerful tech hubs, but if there were, CcHub and iHub would arguably be up top. This would be based on the size of their membership networks, volume of tech related programs, startups incubated, partnerships, and global visibility.

Founded in 2011 in Lagos’ tech-synonymous Yaba suburb, the Co-Creation Hub has grown into a multi-faceted innovation center. The organization manages digital skills programs for entrepreneurs and school kids, startup incubation, and a portfolio of investments through its Growth Capital Fund.

CcHub is considered a go-to spot for any tech related visit to Nigeria. It was Mark Zuckerberg’s  first public stop on his 2016 Africa trip. While leaving a CcHub event in 2018, I noticed the Vice President of Nigeria, Yemi Osinbajo, and his entourage packing into the elevator.

Tijani and team have mastered gaining partnerships with big global tech names. When Facebook launched its tech space in Nigeria—NG_Hub—CcHub was named lead partner. Google for Startups sponsored CcHub’s Pitch Drive, an African startup tour to Europe and Asia. CcHub also collaborated with the Government of Rwanda this year to open its Design Lab in Kigali, focused on innovating impact solutions in health, education, and governance.

The Design Lab launch extended CcHub’s West Africa reach further east and closer to iHub. The innovation center was co-founded by Erik Hersman in 2010 out of what he saw as a need in Africa’s emerging tech scene “for…creating community spaces…in major cities [for] young entrepreneurs. The nexus point for technologists, investors, [and] tech companies.”

iHub became that central spot in East Africa. Along with M-Pesa mobile-money and a vibrant startup scene, it is one of the pillars that inspired Kenya’s Silicon Savannah moniker.

iHub is also widely seen as giving rise to the Africa’s innovation center movement that inspired the upsurge in tech hubs across the continent.

Since 2010, 170  companies have formed out of iHub. It has 16,000 members and has played host to most major visitors to Kenya’s tech scene. After seeing CcHub in Nigeria in 2016, Zuck then headed to Kenya and toured iHub.

There’ll be plenty for continuing coverage on how these two prominent African incubators settle into becoming one big Africa mega-hub. That includes the sustainability question and what this all means to the continent’s tech scene.

At a high level, for now, the CcHub-iHub union creates a direct innovation link between two of Africa’s most active markets for VC and startup formation—Nigeria and Kenya.

In the past, both countries’ techies have shared a healthy rivalry. That could now turn to more  collaborations, as CcHub’s acquisition connects East and West in African tech.

Read More

FLUTTERWAVE - Disrupting The Future Of Online Payments Processing In Africa

When a formidable team of innovators rub minds together to create a product that would be industry-changing, it is called a disruption.

This is the story of flutterwave.

Are you a business owner looking to do business in Africa but managing payments seamlessly is a huge source of concern for you? Then read on . 

By now it's no longer news that there's disruption in the finance industry especially within Nigerian and generally on the African continent as a whole, technology is re-shaping how payments are made not just within Nigeria and Africa but in the world at large. One of such companies at the intersection of this rapid growth and innovation that has piqued interests is flutterwave.

What is Flutterwave? 

Flutterwave is an online payment processing company focused on helping and connecting businesses and their customers with secure and seamless payment experience.

Flutterwave works with banks across Africa by providing the needed technology and integrations for payments in local currencies with local debit cards, bank accounts or mobile wallets across several African countries. It was founded in 2016 by a team of ex-bankers, entrepreneurs and engineers and one notable member of the team is Iyinoluwa Aboyeji (a co-founder at Andela one of the African continent's most notable tech startup). 

Headquartered in San Francisco (which was stragetic to the company landing international funding) with offices in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, Johannesburg flutterwave's service allows consumers to pay for things in their local currency. Before flutterwave, there was no universal payment method in Africa for businesses to accept and transfer payments which significantly created a gap for businesses as well as consumers. African businesses have a hard time accepting payments within the continent as well as outside. This digital divide also makes it difficult for companies like Google, Netflix,Amazon and Facebook to accept local payments from African customers.This was one of the motivating factors for one of the co-founders, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji to leave Andela ( a company he had recently cofunded for flutterwave, a passion to place Africa on the global digital and payments landscape). 

In 2017, it was able to raise over $10 million in a Series A round of funding. The round was led by Greycroft Partners and Green Visor Capital with participation from Y Combinator and Glynn Capital which flutterwave used to get more talents and build it's global reach. 

To date, the company has processed more than $2.5 billion in payments (as of 2019, flutterwave) across 100 million transactions.  350 currencies across 30 African countries are currently accepted by flutterwave and a small service charge is collected from businesses, which it shares with banks. It has partnered with 50 banks in Africa and 1200+developers build on Flutterwave for a company that's 3years old that's laudable of course having a highly skilled team is evidently a plus as well. To advance their goal as the payments platform to be reckoned with, the Flutterwave team has integrated other foreign payments API to theirs, making transactions between buyers and sellers globally even more seamless. businesses that use flutterwave include Uber, flywire, OjaExpress, Kikikamu etc

Lifechanging Innovations 

Products that have been developed by flutterwave as it charts frontier leadership within the fintech industry include:

Rave (flutterwave for business) is a payment service created by flutterwave that enables merchants accept global payments from card, bank accounts and USSD. It supports payment from 150+ currencies which is a breathe of fresh air for African businesses. Rave has no set up or monthly fees costs, you can start with right away and only pay for the transactions you accept Rave is now connected to Xero, Quickbooks, Sage and Zoho.

GetBarter (flutterwave for consumers) is a lifestyle payment solution launched by flutterwave alongside Visa. Visa cardholders will be able to make payments within the app and make online and mobile transactions by attaching their card details to their GetBarter app profile while non-card carriers can generate a virtual Visa card upon registration. GetBarter users can carry out their business transactions, pay utility bills and send payments to thousands of  anywhere Visa is accepted globally.

FlutterWave's Challenges

Amidst these rave reviews (pun intended), there have been some reservations like one’s inability to securely capture a payment when you make use of your own forms, unlike its foreign peers: Stripe and Fattmerchant, that allow you to tokenize your credit card payments in a safe way, while allowing you to use your own forms. But it cannot be ignored, the unique abilities that Flutterwave possesses when it comes to payment on a continent where very few are in possession of credit cards is quite a feat on its own. 

Achievements

1.  2017 -  raised $10 million in a Series A  funding.
2. 2018 - completed an extension of its Series A funding round backed by global payments companies like CRE Ventures, Fintech Collective, MasterCard 4DX Ventures amongst others and raised a total of $20 million.
3.  2018 - Flutterwave received an award for the Best Payments Company at the Ghanaian eCommerce Awards ceremony in Ghana.
4.  By the end of 2018 there was 550% growth in the customer base for rave(flutterwave for business). Also it had 26,000 users and counting.
5. 2019 - Flutterwave partnered by Visa launch consumer payment product called GetBarter.
6. 2019 - Flutterwave currently partners hotels.ng on its internship project for young developers IN Nigeria.

In all if you are a business looking for a way to create a seamless payments system within your business within the African continent then flutterwave is your best bet for a seamless experience.

Read More

Metro Africa Xpress Looks To Bring On-Demand Local Delivery To Urban Africa

Adetayo Bamiduro had to convince his co-founder Chinedu Azodoh that starting an e-commerce site wasn’t necessarily the best idea — at least, not yet. Instead, the two decided to start Metro Africa Xpress (or MAX, for short), a last-mile delivery service for urban Africa based in Lagos, Nigeria. MAX is launching onstage today at TechCrunch Disrupt London.

The service gives merchants a way to have their goods delivered to customers within three hours through a platform that can use an API the company built, as well as through text messaging and other platforms. Merchants summon MAX couriers through the platform and MAX charges the merchants based on distance instead of weight and other factors that logistics companies often use. In addition, traditional logistics companies currently can’t offer that kind of speed, which is largely the focus of MAX, Azodoh said.

“We hated the way things are done today — you have kilograms, measuring, everyone wastes time,” he said. “Typically, the whole process wasn’t well-organized or well thought out, so for us we do it to simplify the process and make it easy to use our platform.”

MAX does have crowdsourced couriers, but it also has a baseline staff of people to deliver packages on branded motorcycles. The couriers they employ full-time are paid on a salaried basis, while its crowdsourced couriers — if the demand is there — get paid per delivery. Around 70% of the drivers are full-time, Azodoh said on stage.

The pair is from Nigeria, and they went through TechStars (one of the first to come out of Nigeria). Azodoh said they built MAX in Africa to help encourage others on the continent to start companies.

“When you look at the landscape, there weren’t many successful companies that were African-owned, it made it difficult for younger people to look up,” Azodoh said. “Cities in Africa have some of the highest urbanization rates compared across the world. With more and more coming into the system, it’s very important we have things that you can look up to, and say hey, if MAX has done it, I can do it.”

Another reason they built the company in Africa is they want to enable retailers to grow by giving them the tools to actually deliver their goods — which is a natural precursor to growing, you’d expect. On the e-commerce side, one of the reasons it hasn’t hit the penetration rate that is seen in the UK and the United States is that there isn’t a good infrastructure for delivery, he said.

“When you look at comparable markets, the growth of e-commerce has directly correlated with the appearance of strong last-mile delivery,” Azodoh said. “Our main goal is to empower retailers and consumers across the company. The most effective way to do that is to provide last-mile delivery. That provides a real way of commerce workflow.”

Of course, there is the elephant in the room: Uber. The company could end up going after the same space that MAX is going after, given its history of being an aggressive — and well-funded — company with a knack for handling trips from one point to another. Azodoh knows that there’s a chance that Uber could be gunning for them eventually, but said he’s just heads down working on the company right now.

“The great thing has been focusing on executing and executing like crazy,” he said. “We want to get things done as fast as possible. We’re not too focused on what the competitors are doing. We love them and respect them; we don’t use that as a scale of measurement of our performance.”

Read More