Investor Updates: May 30 2022 - Nigeria-based Betastore gets $2.5m for African expansion

Nigeria-based Betastore gets $2.5m for African expansion

Highlights

• With operations spread across Nigeria, Senegal, and Ivory Coast, BetaStore, a tech-enabled B2B retail startup, has closed a $2.5 million pre-series A funding round.
• BetaStore makes it possible for small businesses to seamlessly source their inventory and access capital to scale their business growth. 
• The fund was received from 500 Global, VestedWorld, and Loyal VC, bringing the investment raised by BetaStore to $3 million to date. It will enable an expansion into Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cameroon by the end of this year and the launch of a financing product in July.

Source: TechEconomy

Our Takeaway

It’s easy to see why VC funding is increasingly pouring into the B2B e-commerce space space. More than $600 billion of consumer goods are sold in Africa through informal retail channels every year, supplying the vast majority of the 1.2 billion population yet the industry is faced with several challenges, such as stockouts, lack of working capital, etc, which can be addressed, profitably, with digitization. 

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Nigerian-founded NFT Platform, Ayoken, raises $1.4m

Highlights

• Ayoken, a digital collectibles marketplace connecting creators in emerging markets like Africa to global audiences, has raised $1.4 million in pre-seed funding.
• The investment was raised from Founders Factory Africa, Texas-based Kon Ventures, Europe-based venture capital collective Crypto League, Ghana-based R9C Ventures, and Maximus Ventures. 
• Founded by Joshua King and headquartered in London, Ayoken plans to use the pre-seed funding to expand its team and presence across countries, and also sign a number of exclusive deals with artists and partnerships with telcos.

Source: TechCrunch

Our Takeaway

Artists and other players in the NFTs space across Africa are confronted with several challenges in accessing the marketplaces. Regardless, we expect NFT adoption in Africa will continue to soar, particularly in countries where they’ve become widely popular due to a growing interest from artists, entertainers, and investors. And this is evident in the emergence of Africa-focused platforms such as Ayoken.

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Elon Musk’s Starlink approved by Nigeria and Mozambique

Highlights

• Elon Musk announced in a tweet on Friday that Starlink, the satellite internet service launched by SpaceX, his space exploration company, has been approved in Nigeria and Mozambique.
• Starlink operates in more than 30 countries where it is legally approved, in essence, where it has required licenses to provide internet services.
• Its launch in Africa, particularly in Nigeria, has been in the works since 2021 and according to reports from local media reports, the Nigerian communications regulator has approved this license, corroborating Musk’s tweet.

Source: TechCrunch

Our Takeaway

African governments have made huge strides in making the internet accessible for their 1.2 billion people. But with just 22% internet connectivity, the continent remains significantly behind other regions in the world. It needs between $70-$100 billion annually to address its existing infrastructure gap while most of the current and past direct investments have been poured into terrestrial networks run by leading telecom players like MTN, Airtel and Orange. Starlink’s satellite internet thus offers a unique proposition but its ability to compete with existing players will depend on how well it can lower cost of adoption.