FirstFounders, a digital entrepreneurship agency in Nigeria has held an online seed funding programme for startups aimed at helping young entrepreneurs in Africa grow.
The firm, committed to building and incubating digital enterprises in Africa led two Nigerian startups, ‘Waste Pushers’ and ‘2828 Insights Fashion’ in an e-conference programme get an international seed funding for their businesses.
The initiative sponsored by FirstFounders was to help startups and growth stage companies speed up the process of fundraising, reduce risk, and getting better deals while they are diligently running their businesses.
During the event, the Chief Digital Strategist and CEO, FirstFounders, David Lanre-Messan (DLM) in his address described Africa as the next frontier for growth and where great ideas that will become global unicorns are emanating from.
DLM, as he is popularly known, an international partner (Africa) at World Business Angels Investment Forum (WBAF) further recognised the role Juliano Almeida, an investor and international partner (Brazil) at WBAF played in making the entire funding process seamless and inspiring.
“Almeida is a Brazilian partner and has been a passionate advocate for African startups, and has rallied several investors in South America to take interest in African startups”, DLM said.
According to Messan, “FirstFounders’ drive has always been to democratize access to finance that keeps it connected to over 2600 private investors, angel investors, global venture capitalists and debt financing companies spread across 20 countries.”
Lucci Nneoma Anyim, Chief Executive Officer, 2828 Insights Fashion and one of the recipient of the startups seed fund described her experience as amazing and life changing moment.
She said that she started her company, ‘2828 Insight Fashion’ after resigning her job at an internet services provider company where she worked as a corporate marketing personnel.
Anyim who was full of praise to the organisers during the online conversation thanked FirstFounders for facilitating the process that got her the funding.
“I am so excited for this because people have always encouraged me to do good work, happy about the funding and look forward to get more”, she said.
Another recipient that got the funding, Ibrahim Danyaro, the CEO Waste Pushers said that he started the waste management company that got him the funding to solve the challenges that surround domestic waste management in all where he has lived.
“While living in different places, I discovered that domestic waste doesn’t get picked up and became a major problem that we have to engage cart pusher to clear,
In this, I saw an opportunity in it on how to revolutionize it, put a face to it, make it modern and turn into a business that will solve the problem of domestic waste collection. I am very happy that the dream is coming to light that I want to scale it up from local government to local government, and to every state in the country”, Danyaro explained cheerfully.
Danyaro said that the second phase of the project is sorting waste collection and recycling it and he’s happy getting the funding and ready to take on the challenge of waste collection.
Lanre-Messan in his final message at the end of the conversation explained that they are excited initiating the funding process for the startups and also ensure that more startups are on board.
