Nigeria’s social innovation centre CcHUB has launched a $500,000 seed investment fund to support early stage start-ups over the next two years.
The start-ups Vacantboards, Truppr, Traclist, 500shops and GeniiGames will receive sums ranging from $10,000 – $25,000 to support them in business model experimentation and operations. The hub announced the beneficiaries on the first anniversary of its incubation office used for mentorship, user testing, access to markets, office space and administration.
Bosun Tijani, CEO & Co-founder of CcHUB said,‘CcHUB incubation office launched in response to the need to provide business development, mentoring and funding support to start-ups that showed traction from our impactful Pre-incubation program. Our seed investment ensures startups have a sure footing post-Preincubation to concentrate on rapidly executing their plans and learning from the market.’
Vacantboards, Truppr, Traclist, 500shops and GeniiGames went through CcHUB’s Pre-Incubation program to help them address local market problems with relevant solutions and began out with a grant $5,000 each to support their ideas, build working prototypes, carry out initial market testing & proof their concepts. These ideas grew steadily, earning revenues, increasing their user bases and building partnerships hence needing a different kind of support. The initial grant came from the $90,000 Tony Elumelu Foundation/CcHUB pre-seed fund.
‘Discussions are already underway with investors to provide additional funding to two (2) of our initial beneficiaries and we hope to break the news in the coming months’ remarked Tunji Eleso, Director of Incubation. We welcome startups looking to transform the way Nigerians live, play and do business to apply to join our portfolio via http://cchubnigeria.com/pre-incubation/ he further stated.
Just a little background on the startups.
Vacantboards (www.vacantboards.com) led by Tunji Alao is an online outdoor advertising marketplace which enables one-click booking of outdoor advert spaces & tracking of advert campaigns. Truppr (www.truppr.com) founded by Bosun Tijani is a social tool that connects people with physical activities and teammates in cities across the world. Traclist (www.traclist.com) run by Emotu Balogun is an online marketplace that helps fashion retailers expose their inventory and allows customers all over Nigeria to buy from an wide array of products and 500 shops (www.500shops.com) led by Clive Ayonye offers small and medium sized businesses the opportunity to set up a complete online store and accept orders in minutes. Genii games (www.geniigames.com) led by Adebayo Adegbembo delivers educative apps aimed at preserving and promoting African Culture and related subjects which include languages, etiquette and ethics.