TechCabal Daily - Taking the crowd out of crowdfunding

16 FEB, 2021

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

Good morning ☀️ ️

If you’ve been following the 2021 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Fan Vote, here’s an update:

Fela Kuti, who was at the bottom of the list before Nigerian Twitter got wind of it, is currently number one with over 131,000 votes and Tina Turner follows, not-so-closely, with over 98,000 votes.

In today’s edition:

Crowdfunding
Uber to Netflix
WTO has a new DG
Retail in Kenya

Order comes to crowdfunding

In April 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released draft regulations for crowdfunding activity in Nigeria. It was one of the few sectors where people were actually asking for regulation.

While there are a lot of positives to companies raising funds from the public in exchange for equity, some bad actors have seized the absence of regulation to fleece investors. Because there were no rules, investors had no recourse whenever this happened.

So the 2020 draft regulations were a relief. Yet that draft was silent on “agritech” companies. The new regulations call agritech companies, commodities investment companies.

What’s big about the new regulations: Crowdfunding intermediaries will now need a paid-up capital of ₦100 million before they can be registered. There are interesting implications to this.

I spoke to people at PiggyVest and PettySave to make sense of whether the new regulations would bring big changes to their business.

The result is this article: read it here.

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On the move

Ebi Atawodi has had quite the career. A recent LinkedIn post announced her move to Netflix as the director of payments for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Before her Netflix move, she was head of Products at Uber in 2017 and was instrumental in helping the ride hailing startup scale in West Africa.

At Netflix, she’ll be right where she was in 2017, helping to grow a nascent service into a household name on the continent.

The competition from MultiChoice and Canal+ on the continent means that predicting a Netflix domination is foolhardy.

In any case, it helps to give us something to think about and follow for the PayTV and SVOD wars.

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Big changes at the WTO

On Sunday night, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s former finance minister and one-time managing director of the World Bank, spoke to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

One of the questions she answered was what the World Trade Organization’s new direction will be under her leadership. She said that her priority is to use trade as a way to help nations get through the pandemic

Less than 24 hours later, she was announced as the first woman and the first African to lead the World Trade Organization.

Her words: “Our organization faces a great many challenges but working together we can collectively make the WTO stronger, more agile and better adapted to the realities of today.”

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Kenya and retail

“Kenya is quickly becoming the deathbed for giant retailers.”

As far as ledes go, nothing else will grab your attention more.

The meat of the matter: “This is the puzzle of the retailers that get goods on credit, sell in cash but suffer cashflow problems. What is killing them?”

Dig deeper: Kenya is becoming the graveyard of retail businesses