Nigeria's funded startups: where they are now
Payment fees and deposit-funded lending make the money; distributors shrink rather than shut
Every startup based in Nigeria, or with Nigeria as its main market, that raised a single round of — or more in —. Those years are when the money came in, not when companies failed: outcomes are followed up to —, which is why Okra's 2025 shutdown and Alerzo's 2026 asset freeze are counted. Of the — that sell something cheaper than what their customers already pay, — are still operating. Of the — that had to match an existing low price, — are still running, and — have published a profit.
Outcome by sector
Payments, lending and vehicle finance hold up; distribution and logistics do not. Each chip is one company; failures are in red. Hover a chip for what happened.
Distribution dies slowly here, not quickly
All — companies that supply consumer goods, food or medicines to small shops, restaurants and pharmacies sell at prices that informal wholesalers already set. — are still running and — have published a profit. Rather than collapse, as Twiga and Copia did in Kenya, they shrink or turn into something else. TradeDepot launched its own food brand and handed delivery to third parties. Sabi left trading goods for commodity export tracing. Vendease restructured after two rounds of layoffs. A court froze Alerzo's assets after Moniepoint's bank sued over an unpaid loan. The one logistics company, Kobo360, went the same way: its investors sold out to the former chief executive. The distribution trap is the same as in Kenya; it is just ending more slowly.
Who makes money and who loses it, by sector
Profitable means a publicly reported profit with figures. Operating means still running, with no published profit. Each chip is one company.
Winning and losing sectors
Bars to the left are companies that failed or are distressed; bars to the right are still operating, with profitable ones in the accent color. Sectors are ordered from most net winners to most net losers. Hover a bar for names.
Every company by name
What the winners have that the losers don't
How many companies in each group have each trait. Darker cells mean more of the group has it.
The terms, in plain words.
- Spend displacement: the product costs less than what the same customers already pay for the same need, so they redirect money instead of finding new money. This is the poverty premium/penalty being removed. In Nigeria the clearest cases are bank charges and cash queues replaced by free transfers and nearby agents, and diesel or petrol generators replaced by solar.
- Price taker: a company with no pricing power, which has to accept the price that cheaper rivals, often informal traders, have already set.
- Essential need: demand that holds up when money is tight (food, energy, transport, health, moving money). Economists call it inelastic demand.
- Asset-heavy: high capital intensity; the company owns fleets, warehouses, labs, power plants or farms.
- Asset-backed debt: borrowing secured on the thing sold or on the stream of customer payments, through repossession rights, lockable devices or a lien on the harvest.
- Recurring payments: customers pay daily, weekly or monthly, or on every transaction, rather than once, which makes revenue predictable.
- Policy dependence: the business only works while a subsidy, licence, regulation or government approval is in place, or once one arrives.
Reading the map. As in Kenya, every profitable company collects small, repeated payments, and every distressed company is a price taker. The difference is how the winners fund themselves. None of Nigeria's profitable companies relies on debt secured on an asset. They earn fees on money moving through an economy where cash is often scarce, bank transfers fail and branches are far away, and the ones with bank licences lend out customer deposits. The asset-backed lenders (MAX, Moove, ThriveAgric, Lumos) are all still operating, but none has published a profit. The two outright failures, Okra and 54gene, sold data to other businesses; neither depended on what households spend.
Why they failed or stalled
Each company's main cause, and the event that finally tipped it over. The cause is what made the business fragile; the trigger is what ended it. Nigeria has fewer outright failures than Kenya among companies this size; distress shows up instead as insiders buying out investors, lenders seizing assets and companies abandoning what they were funded to do.
Who is making money
Only companies that have published profit figures. PalmPay, Moniepoint and MAX say they are profitable but publish no figures, so they are counted as operating. The other operating companies do not publish results, so operating should not be read as profitable.
What the profitable ones share.
- Fees on money moving, not margins on goods. The leaders earn a small cut every time money is sent, paid or withdrawn. In a cash-short economy with unreliable bank transfers, that is a service people pay for repeatedly and do not give up when money is tight.
- A bank licence turns customers into funders. FairMoney now funds much of its lending from customer deposits, which costs far less than borrowing from investors at Nigerian interest rates.
- Cheap distribution from a large parent. OPay was started by Opera, and PalmPay comes pre-installed on phones made by its backer Transsion. Both could afford years of free transfers to win users.
- Currency is the hidden cost. The naira lost most of its dollar value in 2023 and 2024. Companies raising dollars and earning naira saw their revenue shrink in dollar terms; Okra named the devaluation among the reasons it shut. Profits reported in naira should be read with the exchange rate in mind.
All companies
Click a column to sort. The largest round is the biggest single round announced in the window.
Method and limits
Who is in. Startups headquartered in Nigeria, or with Nigeria as their main market, that announced one round of — or more (equity or debt) in —. The main-market rule brings in FairMoney (registered in France), Kuda (UK), Lumos (Netherlands) and Moove, which was founded in Lagos but now does most of its business elsewhere. The window covers when the money was raised; outcomes are followed to the present. It stops where it does so that every company has had at least three years to show how it turned out. Rounds and outcomes come from press reports, linked per company in the cards.
How each company is coded.
- Poverty premium/penalty: the extra that poor households and small businesses pay for the same thing, such as running a generator instead of grid power, paying bank charges and travelling to a branch, or renting a vehicle daily instead of owning it. C.K. Prahalad called it the poverty penalty. Yes when the product removes it, costing less than what the same customers already spend on the same need. Partial when it saves something real but sells at market price. No when it must match a price already set by low-cost informal operators. n/a when the customer is a large business or the product replaces no existing spend.
- Asset intensity: High when the company owns fleets, warehouses, labs, power plants or farms; Medium when it carries inventory, vehicles or receivables; Low when it is mostly software and people.
- Outcome: Operating (acquisitions such as Daystar by Shell and Mono by Flutterwave count here), Distressed (investors selling out to insiders, a court freezing assets, or abandoning the core business), or Failed (shut, administration or liquidation), as of the date shown.
- Profitable: published profit figures. A company's statement that it is profitable, without figures, is not enough.
Left out. Andela, Chipper Cash, LemFi and Umba (headquartered outside Nigeria, with most business elsewhere); Interswitch (a mature company, not a startup); Paystack (bought by Stripe in 2020, with no round of this size in the window); Mines.io and Aella Credit (rounds in the window, but their current status could not be confirmed).
Limits. The sample is small, so read the pattern as strong evidence, not proof. Big rounds in Nigeria went mostly to payments, and many of the startups that shut in 2024 and 2025 never raised a round this large, so this list understates how many Nigerian startups fail. Operating is not the same as a good return for investors; several companies have little public data and are marked so. Kobo360's 2019 round is counted as its $20m equity round; the $30m often reported included bank working capital. Lumos's round size and Moove's round year come from press reports and were not re-checked against a primary source. The coding is my own judgment and is open to challenge row by row.
About this research. This study is my own independent work. I did it because billions have gone into African startups, and the record of what that money built is thin. Comments, corrections and conversations are welcome: Peter Muiga, pm@curatedventures.africa.
Curated Ventures is not a fund; it's where I publish my thinking as I move into venture investing. I am open to conversations about the research, and about working together.
Share your thoughts or reach me at pm@curatedventures.africa · Peter Muiga