By allowing anyone to scan a QR code, check out a list of meals, and pay through bank transfer, Apple Pay, or a card, it eliminated the need for repeated interactions with the restaurant’s wait staff.

Mira soon learned restaurants wanted something slightly different but familiar: a point-of-sale management system tied to hardware. It led to the launch of the Mira register. 

Priced at ₦360,000 ($226), Mira register has two displays, a receipt printer, a barcode scanner, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It tracks customer orders and internal business processes. The device comes with a Budpay or VFD embedded account to receive payments. Food delivery apps like Chowdeck and Glovo are also integrated with the hardware device for order fulfillment.  

Mira charges a monthly subscription fee ranging from $5 per restaurant location for its basic plan to $500 for larger restaurants in its enterprise plan. It charges $30 for its pro plan and a 1% transaction fee on payments made on Mira Register.

“We started with the simplest form (order management system) to get us into the hospitality space,” said Ted Oladele, Mira’s CEO.

Mira initially offered restaurants a plan to pay for the device in 12-month installments, but most restaurants preferred to pay full price upfront. These businesses already pay upfront for Orda, Louverse, Workman, and Omega POS, Mira’s competitors.  

While those competitor devices need internet access to run smoothly, Mira claims it uses a hybrid approach that allows restaurants to operate the product with minimal internet connection. 

“There is a reputation deficit for local players. We are trying to enter the market with a reputable product,” said Oladele.

Feranmi Adejumobi, co-founder at Ni Fries, claims Mira’s most valuable feature is its dashboard’s detailed inventory tracking data.

“The Mira dashboard allows us to track inventory levels and calculate the amount of food we can produce efficiently,” said Adejumobi. He claims the dashboard allows businesses to collect data points that can inform their pricing strategies and overall profitability. 

Despite its claim to a better product, Mira faces an uphill climb in overcoming the switching costs for businesses who may already use its competitors’ devices.

The startup serves a mix of SMEs—restaurants and retail stores—and counts Olaiya Foods, Grey Matter, The Vault, NiFries, OTP Kitchen, and Ashluxe as customers. Mira currently serves about 200 businesses across Nigeria. 

Since its launch, Mira has processed over $500,000 in transactions since launch, earning most of its revenue from businesses on its enterprise plan. 

“We are more expensive than the average local competitor. We don’t fight on pricing,” said Oladele.

The startup raised $200,000 in a family and friends round and is in the middle of a seed round.

While some customers who spoke to TechCabal experienced occasional glitches on the device, they are typical for startups in the early stages of development. Oladele claims the startup constantly seeks customers’ feedback and occasionally gets requests to build custom features. ‘

While Oladele agrees that building custom solutions for users on request might be a slow approach for a venture-backed startup, he thinks it is a necessary step to building a superior product. 

As Mira expands its service offering and looks for product differentiation, Oladele’s goal is to attract a 10% market share which will make the business profitable.

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In 2021, the VC firm announced the first close of its $40 million Ventures Platform Fund I to invest in startups across Fintech, Logistics, Healthtech, Cleantech. Ventures Platform raised that first close from limited partners and other organisations including Paystack CEO Shola Akinlade, Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), and UAC Nigeria. The VC firm also raised part of that fund from global investors like Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel and Adam Draper. Ventures Platform closed the $46 million fund in 2022.

The VC firm, which has backed some of the biggest companies on the continent including Piggyvest, Remedial Health and OmniRetail, disbursed $19.6 million from its $46 million fund across different startups on the continent.

It has deployed more than half of the fund in pre-seed (51.49%) and seed stage startups (40.84%). It deployed a tiny fraction (7.64%) in Pre-Series A startups.  

The VC firm invests in startups that address critical challenges faced by low-income populations on the continent, such as limited access to healthcare, education, and financial services. 

Of the $46 million fund, fintech startups got $6.8 million in funding while investment in SaaS startups ($2.8 million), B2B ($2 million) and Healthtech ($2.4 million) were the next highest. 

The firm also invested $7.9 million across other sectors including logistics, autotech, insurtech and cleantech.  The VC firm which predominantly invests in fintech believes there are more opportunities in the sector. 

“We see opportunities in Intra-African remittance,” Kola Aina, founding partner at Ventures Platform told TechCabal. 

Although Ventures Platform has recently talked up plans of investing outside of Nigeria, 80% of the Fund I investment went to startups headquartered in the Big 4. 

While Africa’s startup scene has witnessed a drop in funding, Aina says the funding downturn has not affected its investment thesis. 

“We believe this is the best time to invest, there is less noise. We are now focused fundamentally on solid unit economics,” he said. “Businesses don’t have to rely on follow-on funding to figure things out.”

Investing comes with learning. A key challenge for VP has been a mismatch between the fund’s lifespan and the long-term needs of promising startups.  Its workaround is providing follow-on funding for these startups.

“Even as a seed-fund, we are data driven. We don’t do spray and pray, we let the data inform us on our follow-up funding.”

In July 2024, Ventures Platform talked up spreading its investment across Africa. The VC firm had previously invested in 12 Non-Nigerian startups like Notto in South Africa,  Union54 in Zambia, Karcel in Egypt.   

“Even though we started from Nigeria and most of our investments are based in Nigeria, we always set out to be a pan-African investor,” said Dotun Olowoporoku, the managing partner of Ventures Platform.

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At the heart of the matter is a customer’s claim that the bank had used their personal information without consent to open an account. 

Fidelity Bank claims an internal investigation showed no evidence of a data breach and that the account opening process was not completed due to missing documentation.

“On May 2nd 2023, we responded to the NDPC that the bank did not violate any law because there was no data breach and that the account opening process was not completed,” the bank said in a statement.

“On our part, we carried out due diligence by immediately blocking the account and subsequently closing the account when we did not receive the outstanding documents.”

The NDPC alleges that the bank processed personal data without informed consent and relied on non-compliant third-party data processors. The regulator imposed a fine of ₦555.8 million ($353,254) on the bank, citing repeated warnings and a lack of satisfactory remedial plans.

Fidelity Bank said the regulator had initially demanded a remedial fee of ₦250 million ($158,894) on December 5, 2023, but the bank had challenged this decision, insisting that they had not violated any laws. Despite ongoing negotiations, the NDPC increased the fine to ₦555.8 million on August 20, the bank claimed.

The bank’s dispute with the NDPC comes amidst growing scrutiny of data privacy and protection in Nigeria. The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) fined WhatsApp $220 million, over claims that it did not give users consent over the use of their data. 

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Data from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics puts July’s headline inflation at 33.40%, down from 34.19% recorded in June. Food inflation also slowed to 39.53% from 40.87% in June 2024.

“The moderations we have been expecting for the longest time might start to happen through the end of the year,” said Samuel Onyenkanmi, an Analyst at Norreberger. 

A slowdown in inflation will offer some respite to its citizens who have borne the brunt of Tinubu’s reforms. Those citizens have staged protests demanding lower electricity tariffs and the reinstatement of fuel subsidies. In July, the government suspended taxes and import duties on food items like maize and wheat for 150 days, a move aimed at lowering the cost of food.

Despite the positive notes in food and headline inflation, core inflation (all items except farm produce and energy) quickened to 27.47%, with rent, transportation, and other services driving the increases.

*This is a developing story

These data points are from the State of the Employed report by PaidHR, a Nigerian startup that helps businesses manage their HR functions. The company spoke to over 1,600 employees—half of whom are 19 to 35—and employers in Lagos. 

“[The report] helps us understand the plight of people who earn salaries, spotlighting how they earn it, where they earn it, and what their earnings enable them to do,” said Seye Bandele, PaidHR CEO.  

As Nigeria’s cost-of-living crisis deepens, half of working Lagosians spend more than they earn monthly. They resort to second income streams to supplement those earnings. 

These workers (51.2%) have no income left after covering necessities like food, transport, rent, and utility payments. Food is the most significant of those bills, with workers spending ₦54,000 on food monthly—that number used to be ₦38,000 in 2023. Transport costs also jumped from ₦16,000 monthly in 2023 to ₦22,000 in 2024. 

Only a few people (30%) have budgets for recreation, and saving is a similar luxury.

For those who do manage to save, the primary motivation is rent. Overall, men tend to save more than women, particularly married men. However, single women save more than single men.

While credit solutions are crucial for navigating economic hardships, the report reveals a significant gap in access. 70% of Lagos workers lack employer-backed loans or credit facilities. This presents an opportunity for digital lenders to develop credit solutions tailored to these specific needs.  

The nation’s economic woes have also affected the productivity of these workers. 55% of workers surveyed said the country’s economy has affected their productivity at work. While financial strain is a key factor, a surprising 58% of respondents blamed their mental health and lack of employer support for poor performance at work.

“The US presents a massive opportunity for us as a company and we are excited to bring our unique blend of people-focused technology solutions and nuanced understanding of Africans in the US market to make this expansion into the US a remarkable success,” Damisi Busari, CEO and founder of Sendsprint said.

As part of the acquisition, Nobel Financial Inc.’s Chief Compliance Officer, Scott McClain, will join the Sendsprint team as Chief Compliance Officer.

Launched in 2022, Sendsprint operates in the competitive remittance market with established players like Western Union and MoneyGram and new entrants like LemFi and Leatherback.  The company charges a $5 flat fee across all transactions. The company claims it partners with over 3,000 retailers across Africa—including big names like Shoprite, Dapper Monkey, Jumia, and Cake City—to allow users to send gift cards to recipients in Africa. 

Founded in 2014, Nobel Financial Inc. offers international remittance services from the USA to over 32 countries across Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. The company also allows users to send in-kind gifts such as bags of rice and other gifts to recipients in Africa.

The acquisition comes at a time when remittance flows to Africa continues to grow. In 2022, remittances to the continent reached $100 billion, outpacing both Official Development Assistance (ODA) and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The increase in remittances from the US to Africa is fueled by rising migration and improved financial wellbeing among Africans in the diaspora.

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“We have done all the major integrations, we are left with one last integration with NIBSS [Nigeria Interbank Settlement System], “  said Samuel Eze, the company’s CEO. 

When fully operational, OurPass will compete in Nigeria’s business banking space with established players Brass, Moniepoint, and Prospa. Unlike its competitors that primarily serve small businesses, Ourpass will focus on large corporates like Shoprite, Medplus, UAC Foods and SPAR.

“We are focusing on giving credits for large-corporates, focusing on inventory financing, Asset financing and invoice discounting. “

While its competitors primarily have digital presence, OurPass will build physical presence in all 774 local government areas across Nigeria. The bank will establish presence in business cluster areas—like computer village—and open markets, according to Eze, who declined to share specifics about the implementation. 

OurPass will release its banking-as-a-service product before the end of the year and also create a specialised products for creatives. Eze claims the startup will be profitable within the   next 12 months.

“We are somewhere in between a traditional bank and a fintech.” 

While established banks prioritise revenue, excel in risk management and governance, neobanks have redefined customer experience and operational efficiency. OurPass says it will offer the reliability and financial prudence of a traditional bank alongside the speed and user-centricity of a fintech. 

“At the heart of our business strategy is sustainance. We are constantly thinking about revenue. We are now focused on achieving the best net income ratio.”

In addition to the hefty fine, FCCPC asked WhatsApp to stop sharing user data with other Facebook companies and third parties without explicit consent. The social media platform must also provide information about data collection and restore user control over data usage. 

“We want to be really clear that technically, based on the order, it would be impossible to provide WhatsApp in Nigeria or globally,” a spokesperson for WhatsApp told TechCabal via email. 

“This order contains multiple inaccuracies and misrepresents how WhatsApp works. WhatsApp relies on limited data to run our service and keep users safe, and it would be impossible to provide WhatsApp in Nigeria or globally without Meta’s infrastructure. We are urgently appealing the order to avoid any impact on users,” the statement added. 

Meta did not comment on the FCCPC’s claim that WhatsApp did not allow users to opt out of the 2021 policy. However, it insisted that its January 2021 Privacy Policy update does not include sharing user data. 

“While traditionally mobile carriers and operators store this information, we believe that keeping these records for two billion users would be both a privacy and security risk and we don’t do it,” the privacy document reads.

If Whatsapp ceases operations in Nigeria, it will have enormous consequences for individuals and small business owners. Many SMEs rely on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook to reach their target customers.

Three privacy lawyers questioned the FCCPC’s reference to the National Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) as a basis for the fine. Enacted in 2019 by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), NDPR is the primary data protection framework in Nigeria. 

Two lawyers who asked not to be named say the NDPR will not stand up to scrutiny in court and asked if a government regulation could be authoritative in a matter as significant as privacy. 

While Meta is undoubtedly subject to regulatory oversight, the proportionality of the $220 million fine levied by the FCCPC is questionable, two government figures who asked not to be named said. 

“We are too revenue-focused. What is the opportunity cost of $220 million in government coffers?” asked an Industry expert. 

If WhatsApp ceases operating in Nigeria over those demands, the FCCPC and the Nigerian government will have their answer. 

Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, released a draft of the bill two weeks after it passed a first reading at the National Assembly. If the bill is passed, public institutions will conduct activities and functions electronically, including accepting document filings, information processing, document creation and retention, permit or license issuing, and payment processing. 

“The bill is change-driven. The provisions are very strong, and it’s a culture-shifting bill aimed at driving us towards digitalization,” said Oswald Osaretin Guobadia, Managing partner at DigitA.

The Digital Economy and E-Governance Bill mandates electronic records and contracts within government organizations. It also stipulates a fine of not less than ₦1 million per individual and not less than ₦10 million for corporations who fail to comply with the frameworks, guidelines, and regulations under the act.

The bill also seeks to create a new ICT division that contravenes existing laws established by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA)

“The bill is a bit overloaded and should have been divided into two separate documents—one for the Digital Economy bill and the other for the E-governance bill,” said one analyst who asked not to be named. The analyst also claimed that some parts of the bill have been covered under different aspects of Nigerian law. 

“The entire bill should have been a directive from the President to different institutions on how they can come together and achieve e-governance,” Guobadia notes while conceding that ”Ultimately, the success of this lies in the collaborative nature of the Bill development process.”

The Digital Economy Bill will bring Nigeria closer to e-governance when enacted. The country lags behind other African countries—Ghana, Mauritius, South Africa, and Tunisia—that have been identified with high e-government development indexes. The move will also contribute to Nigeria’s goal of increasing digital literacy rates. 

“The Bill has the potential to significantly improve public administration and service delivery in Nigeria,” said Davidson Oturu, Managing partner at Nubia Capital. 

While the bill will enable e-government and boost digital literacy among government workers, section 62 of the draft seeks to override the provisions of any other law in all matters relating to digital economy and e-government. This can lead to power struggles between existing government agencies who already cater to some part of what the bill covers. 

Launched in 2020 by Dr Tobi Olatunji, Intron Health helps healthcare professionals enter medical records by converting speech into text. This solution is important because doctors in many African countries attend to hundreds of patients daily and have a lot of paperwork to deal with. Intron Health cuts the time doctors spend on writing a patient’s diagnosis through its product. Doctors can enter patients’ medical records, and generate patient reports by voice commands.

Intron Health claims it has helped reduce the turnaround time for radiology reporting at the University of College Hospital, Ibadan, from 48 hours to 20 minutes.

“We are improving efficiency and health outcomes and positively impacting hospital finances,” Olatunji told TechCabal. 

While AI’s application on the continent has been affected by inadequate data, Intron Health’s speech-to-text AI transcription tool accounts for many African accents.  Olatunji, who has over a decade of deep learning experience, says the datasets are trained on over 3.5 million audio clips across African languages (288 accents). 

“We made algorithms that train how the model responds to dominant and minority accents.”

Intron Health is working on a multilingual speech-to-text product to help doctors communicate with patients who don’t understand English.  “We’ll be deploying the English to Hausa model first in the coming months,” Olatunji said.

Intron Health competes with Helium Health (Nigeria) and Terragon Health (Kenya), which provide Electronic Medical Records and Hospital Management Information System (EMR/HMIS) solutions.

“We are not trying to differentiate ourselves, we are only trying to partner with our competition,” Olatunji said. Intron Health offers its speech-to-text recognition software to other electronic medical record businesses. 

The company cares for more than 56,000 patients currently across its partners with over 30 public and private hospitals across Nigeria and Kenya—including the University of College Hospital, Ibadan, Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH) Kano, Babcock Teaching Hospital Ogun, and Meridian Health Group Nairobi.

Its seed round was led by Microtraction, with participation from Plug and Play Ventures, Jaza Rift Ventures, Octopus Ventures, Africa Health Ventures, OpenseedVC, Pi Campus, Alumni Angel, and Baker Bridge Capital.

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