Over $60 million of investors fund may go down the drain, as nine Nigerian startups have shut down after few years of operation, LEADERSHIP finding has revealed.
After raising millions of dollars from investors, these companies which include Lazerpay, Pivo, 54gene, Bundle Africa, Payday, Zazuu, Vibra, Okadabooks and Hytch, folded up this year, after few years of operation.
The major reason is their inability to raise another fund to run their operations.
For instance, Lazerpay, (a company founded by 19-year-old Njoku Emmanuel), after raising $1.1 million, shut down in April 2023, due to its inability to raise another capital to keep the company floating.
In a press statement, Emmanuel announced that, “Today, we announce the difficult decision to cease operations at Lazerpay. Despite our team’s tireless efforts to secure the necessary funding to keep Lazerpay going, we were unable to close a successful fundraising round.
“We fought hard to keep the lights on as long as possible, but unfortunately, we are now at a point where we need to shut down.”
Zazuu, a fintech company founded in 2018 by four Nigerian entrepreneurs, also shut down its operation in 2023 due to its inability to secure additional funds from investors.
Recall that Zazuu, an end-to-end money transfer marketplace that facilitated remittance payments into Sub-Saharan Africa, had in July 2023, raised $2 million to deepen its cross-border payment offering and also build the world’s first non-biased payment platform.