Lagos-based Impact Investors Foundation (IIF), organised a deal summit to facilitate funding for startups. The online event which drew many participants including entrepreneurs, investors, and business networks and intermediaries aims to strengthen entrepreneurial skills, showcase rising startups, DANIEL ESSIET reports.
Since the boom in the startup ecosystem , the gap between the founders and access to finance has been an issue. Most of the problems faced by the startups in their business related to finance, funds, tech, investment pitch among others.
To address this, Lagos based Impact Investors Foundation (IIF) organised a Deal Summit. It was meant to help founders in various aspects such as finance, raising investments, pitches among others. The summit brought together key national actors to enable access to finance for startups with the main objective of promoting job creation and sustainable economic growth. This year’s event, was hosted on a virtual conference platform. The event hosted fund managers, impact investors, Development Finance Institutions and other members of the impact investing community.
Fifteen entrepreneurs pitched in front of investors and key stakeholders enabling access.
This year’s cohort included companies in Digital Health and Medtech; food,Cleantech and Internet of Things.
The event offered them the perfect platform to network with industry leaders, experts and potential investors.
Funded by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), the 2020 IIF Deal Summit, IIF Chairman, Engr. Afolabi Oladele,explained that Summit was geared towards contributing its quota in bridging the financing and economic gap COVID-19 may have created in the Nigerian economy.
Another reason for organising the event,Oladele added, was an attempt to overcome a key challenge of access to finance, especially in the early stages of business development.
He said the aim of the programme was to strengthen participants’ entrepreneurial skills to help them to become more investment-ready and able to scale up.
According to him, the Elevator Pitch” event, is part of IIF initiative to boost business start-up in Nigeria.
The Projects Lead, IIF ,Maria Glover, said the objectives of the Annual Deal Summit was to expose over 15 investment-ready enterprises to 18 impact investors and match them during the summit while also accelerating quality deal flows within the impact investing community.
This year’s edition, according to her, feature 15 social enterprise owners who participated in a four-week investment-readiness booster delivered by Acumen, an international development organisation. The Acumen training programme,she continued, was to prepare the enterprises to be both investment and impact ready and to pitch their businesses to investors at the Deal Summit and to support quality investment pipelines for impact investors.
Ms Glover said Access finance to early stage finance was one of the critical challenges of micro,small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Nigeria.
She explained that the largest impact of COVID-19 was felt by SMEs, who, before the pandemic were struggling to survive amid the fragile state of the economy.
According to her, the opportunity for impact capital in a COVID-19 era was one of the catalysts needed to ensure Nigeria’s 41.5 million MSMEs survive the pandemic.
In his own remarks, the Country Director, Open Society Initiative for West Africa, Jude Ilo, said the economic impact of COVID-19 has been enormous and that small businesses have had to confront a challenging market which restricts their ability to grow, innovate and compete.
He noted that entrepreneurs and innovators have always fuelled the nation’s economic growth so they must support them now to ensure that their energy and ideas can deliver good new jobs and help the nation plot a path to recovery.
West Africa Director, Acumen, Meghan Curran, who oversees the organisation’s work in investing in early stage social enterprises and cultivating a community of social change leaders said 141 companies applied for the deal summit. She said 15 finalists emerged.
She said the finalists underwent four weeks training.
Through a variety of programmes , she said Acumen Academy reaches a wide range of entrepreneurs with scalable businesses.
She said the academy worked specifically with a cohort of founders launching start-ups, ranging from digital marketplaces to delivery companies.
She said the academy has seen entrepreneurs address wide range of challenges in their local communities. The success of the incubator model ,according to her, can be seen through the stories of its entrepreneurs.
As part of the Deal Summit startups delivered five- minute pitches in front of ecosystem builders, corporates, and investors representing some of the most prominent names of tech and entrepreneurship in Lagos.
They all presented innovative ideas linking various fields to technology.
After the elevator pitch, there was a break up session in which the investors and companies provided advice and feedback to the start-ups.
One of the founders was the Chief Executive, SonoCare ,Dr Moses Owoicho Enokela, who said his mission is to scale its mobile diagnostics solution . Several years ago, Enokela tried desperately to stop a patient dying on the delivery bed of a rural hospital. She died along with her unborn infant because nobody knew her placenta was obstructing her birth passage.
She never had an ultrasound examination in the entire course of her pregnancy, and she never had one because she couldn’t afford it or the associated costs, Enokela explained.
Enokela noted that hundreds of thousands of women will continue to lose their lives every year to preventable pregnancy complications if nothing is done. This,he added was motivation that inspired the establishment of SonoCare.
Founded in 2015, SonoCare is a last-mile mobile diagnostic medical imaging solution delivering conveniently accessible and low-cost life-saving diagnostic imaging interventions, such as ultrasound sonograms and echocardiograms, at point of care that can help detect pregnancy complications conveniently and affordably.
SonoCare was the first company in Nigeria to deploy a web and mobile resource for patient information transmission and interdisciplinary collaboration.
So far, it has screened over 26,000 women from 17 rural communities, and detected over 15,000 high-risk pregnancies. An inspiring story was from the
LearnFactory Founder, Chibueze Ukaegbu. A Computer Science and Engineering graduate of Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT), Ukaegbu said the startup trains youths inweb and mobile development, desktop development with Electron, cloud computing with AWS/GCP/Azure, DevoOps with Docker and Kubernetes, Machine Learning with Tensorflow.js and Blockchain apps with Ethereum and Solidity.
Another innovator was the Founder,
OjirehPrime Financial Services Limited,
Edoka Idoko . He built an e-commerce startup called www.ojireh.com from a faulty Samsung tab whose battery last only 30min. One year later we noticed 96% of payment were made via bank transfer. In the course of inquiring why, clients told him they where scaled of falling victims to card fraud so they can’t use their bank card online. ,This is how they stepped into the fin-tech industry with the launch of a prepaid card.
Idoko said OjirehPrime Financial Services Limited,provides alternative banking services using prepaid cards.
The Clinical Director, Zeeno Healthcare, Sylvester Eloho said he established the platform to alleviate the sufferings of Nigerians persons. They were also social entrepreneurs from the renewable energy and agriculture sectors. The Founder, Prado Power
Timi Akinsoji said the renewable energy firm waa developing mini-grids and stand-alone installations across the country. He said the startup was looking for funding to expand its operations.
The founder and owner of Kernelinc resources, an agro-processing company, Amajuoyi Kingsley said the business is involved in harvesting , processing and packaging of quality palm oil products.
According to him, the market in Nigeria was unregulated and allows the proliferation ofadulterated/contaminated palm oil which is injurious to health and the leading cause of cancer.
He said they hope to curb adulteration with KR FOODS palm oil,which is 100 per cent unadulterated, trans-fat free, hygienically processed and has a tamper proof seal with a unique QR code.
The Co-Founder/Chief Executive, ICE Commercial Power, Emmanuel Ekwueme, explained that the organisation deploys modular, cloud-connected solar micro-grids to provide clean, reliable electricity to small businesses and primary health centers as an alternative to diesel/petrol generators.
Also that T ICE incorporates strong community engagement in target communities by training and employing local youth to participate in the development of their communities.
The ICE strategy delivers sustainable impact and job creation in communities that need it most.
The founder of one of Nigeria’s premier indigenous coffee franchises, Happy Coffee ,Princess Adeyinka Tekenah said the organisation provides coffee related solutions. Through the platform, she explained that they re-educate Nigerians about the art of coffee drinking and provide access to the availability of Nigerian grown coffee.
The Founder,Fatara Farms,Ibrahim Aboki said since childhood, he has a very strong entrepreneurship aspirations.
He said the mobile solar innovation offered by his organisation helps small-holder farmers with irrigation using a viable alternative to petrol-consuming generators to draw water.
