The first demo day at the Nigerian technology incubator and accelerator,iDea, was yesterday. The event held at iDea’s Lagos hub in Yaba.
It’s the first time the startups are getting a close-up look from VCs, Angels and the media, after four months at the hub’s accelerator program.
The event was generally a well put-together one with a couple interesting propositions from the startups.
The Startups:
Verge:
Verge is trying to help retailers make sense of the business data generated everyday from their businesses. The startup’s middleware – an analytics layer – pulls and syncs data from existing payments and inventory infrastructure of a retail business and gives an overview of transactions, buyers and other very interesting details that can help a retailer track key components of their business
Nerve pivoted from an hardware-focused startup to software while at iDea. Though it seems Nerve is still into hardware – one is not exactly sure…yet. The new Nerve is a unified digital content distribution system. It’s an infrastructure the startup calls Nerveflo; an API-driven platform that hopes to form the base of a cross-platform digital content marketplace. These guys are basically trying to help content creators make the most – money – out of the content they create.
Hutbay:
The proposition is simple; help people looking for apartments find easy and relevant listing via an aggregation of real-estate agents, property managers and mortgage institutions. Hutbay also has a side-service that lists house/office moving companies. We have written about them here and here.
Afrobus:
Afrobus; a ticket booking network. An interesting side to Afrobus is its white-label Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for inter-city transport operators in Nigeria
VCs, Angels..Everyone
iDEA
Helen Anatogu, Project Manager at iDea
Adedotun Sulaiman, Chairman Governing Board of iDEA
iDea is a mentor-led accelerator program admitting two cohorts per-year with centers in Lagos and Calabar. The hub is currently taking applications for the next cohort of startups into its accelerator program.
Images via: @cogitoergosumng
