Investor Favorites: Nigeria's HR Solution Funding | Tunisia's Expansion | Nigeria Lifts Twitter Ban

Story 1: Nigeria’s SeamlessHR closes $10m Series A

Highlights

• SeamlessHR, a Nigeria-based company that provides cloud-based, end-to-end human resources (HR) and payroll software services, has raised $10 million in Series A funding for its next phase of growth and regional expansion. TLcom Capital, a pan-African venture capital firm, led the round. 
• The startup’s client base comprises hundreds of leading businesses in Nigeria and Ghana and says its software is used by over 100,000 employees from these organizations monthly.
• With this new funding, SeamlessHR will expand into Southern and Eastern Africa, launch embedded finance offerings, and add more functionalities, especially around artificial intelligence, data analytics, and machine learning.

Source: TechCrunch

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In Africa, SeamlessHR has a big market opportunity considering the growing appetite for cloud computing solutions. The Middle East and Africa’s cloud computing industry is expected to grow to $31.4 billion by 2026, from $14.2 billion in 2021. The company competes with legacy platforms SAP and Oracle but has an edge due to its user-friendliness and the localisation of software in Nigeria.

Story 2: After pivoting, Tunisia-based Lamma expands to Morocco

Highlights

• Lamma, a Tunisian quick commerce startup, has launched its service in Morocco, taking its online shopfront of grocery, cosmetics, pharmacy, and fast food products to Moroccans.
• The startup was founded in 2020 as a carpooling service. Last year, it pivoted to become a quick commerce app, secured investment from Orange Ventures, and acquired Farm Trust, an e-commerce platform for fruit and vegetables that provides traceability through blockchain.
• The move by Lamma into Morocco puts it in competition against both Glovo and Jumia, both of which are well established in the country.

-Source: Disrupt Africa

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Lamma is just one of many notable startups that have successfully pivoted from on-demand mobility to logistics in response to market conditions, as Africa continues to see a boom in same-day delivery services. Quick commerce—also termed on-demand delivery—in the Middle East and North Africa, where Lamma operates, is expected to reach about $47 billion by 2030. Much of this growth will be driven by an acceleration in the grocery and food delivery categories. In the long run, nascent retail categories such as fashion and beauty are expected to catch up with essentials.

Story 3: Nigeria lifts ban on Twitter

Highlights

• The Nigerian government has lifted the suspension of Twitter operations more than six months after it banned the social media giant in the country last June.
• The ban was lifted by midnight WAT, January 13, 2022. While it lasted, some Nigerians were still tweeting, circumventing the process by installing Virtual Private Network (VPN) apps.
• Twitters has pledged to open a local office, among other agreements made with authorities in the West African country before the suspension was lifted, a senior government official said on Wednesday.

-Source: TechCrunch

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Nigeria lost $250,600 every hour to the Twitter ban, according to estimates by NetBlocks, bringing the losses to $6,014,400 per day. By the end of Wednesday, it was 5,328 hours in the 222 days since the platform was blocked, and about $1.34 billion was already lost by the economy.