TechCabal Daily ‐ PalmPay, Visa and $40 million

Ladi Ogunseye – Marketing Manager, PalmPay.

Watch out OPay, PalmPay is joining the fray. It feels like all the recent action in Nigeria’s tech scene is in fintech.

What’s New?

PalmPay launched in Nigeria last week with news of a $40 million seed investment. The product is co-owned by Chinese OEM, Transsion Holding which holds significant market share in the African phone market.
Yet, the most impressive part is a strategic partnership with Visa.

What’s the summary? PalmPay will come pre-loaded on all Infinix, Tecno and itel Phones.

How difficult is the streaming business?

The global consensus is that it will take 100 million paying subscribers to turn a profit, if Spotify is anything to go by. In Nigeria, Iroking and Spinlet have tried with very little success to become the Nigerian focused streaming service. And now there’s a relatively new player on the scene.  Here’s a cheat sheet on music streaming businesses in Nigerian history.

GeroCare, Simbi Interactive and E-estates are businesses you should certainly watch out for in the future. Watch out for TechCabal specials about these interesting companies.

Speaking about Nigerian startups…

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s LifeBank making a delivery.

LifeBank is adding ‘Beyond Visual Line Of Sight’, (read: drone delivery) to its methods of transportation, a first of its kind for an African-led company.

The Nigerian-based company took its maiden drone flight in Ethiopia.

There’s more:

Remember that the other Jack, a.k.a Jack Ma swung by Nigeria for like five minutes? His Foundation awarded the Africa Netpreneur Prize Initiative (ANPI) to Lifebank at a ceremony in Accra over the weekend.
It came with a $250,000 cash prize.

The runners up? 

Egypt’s Nawah Scientific and Rwanda’s Water Access Rwanda 

TechCabal is holding an invite-only matching and networking session for investors and edtech startups at our townhall on edtech and future of work.

What date is it? 

November 29, 2019 at the Zone Tech Park, Gbagada Expressway, Lagos. If you are an investor interested in meeting or learning about the startups that are the future of edtech, sign up here so we can get in touch. If you are startup interested in meeting key investors in, let us know here.

The early bird gets the worm…

To attend the Townhall, click here to buy your tickets. To enjoy our early-bird discount, click here or use the code TCEDTECH at checkout. Further discounts apply for companies/individuals buying at least 5 tickets. Please click here to enjoy our corporate discounts.

The Jollof road team is now in Senegal, the original birthplace of Jollof rice. Look away now, Nigeria, you’re not allowed to be disrespectful enough to ask if their jollof can stand toe to toe with ours.

Seriously, read Toke’s submission on the Jollof supremacy here. 

No one likes Monday but you can start yours right by winning.

Take the TechCabal Quiz on all the stuff that’s happened in the Tech Space in Africa in the past week. If you read the newsletter, it’s an easy 7/7, but don’t take my word for it.

Take the quiz now. 

Here’s something to consider…

The  Africa Early Stage Investment Summit (AESIS) held this super interesting panel session on the role of foreign investors in Africa’s tech space. It is an interesting contribution to what will remain a fascinating question.