Startup World Cup Nigeria Regional Competition was held on Saturday 9th of February at Civic Hive in Lagos, and digital publishing platform, Publiseer, emerged the regional champion, beating nine other startups for the title. Publiseer will join other regional winners from various countries, including Mauritius, South Africa, and Kenya, at the Grand Finale, which will be held in Silicon Valley by San-Francisco based venture capital firm, Fenox VC, with a $1 million dollar investment prize. Amongst the 10 startups that pitched at the Nigeria regional final was Natterbase, Edupoint, WellNewMe, Sabi.ai, Spleet, Afara Partners and FarmFunded.
The winner of the Nigeria Regional Competition was determined by a panel of judges that included Olusola Amusan, Founder at Coven Works, Emmanuel Adegboye, Entrepreneurship Center Manager at Andela, Brian Odhiambo, Associate Director at Novastar Ventures, and Dayo Koleowo, Principal Investment Officer at Microtraction. The South African and Mauritian finals were held in September and November respectively, while the Kenyan final will be held in March. The regional winners, including Publiseer, will represent their respective countries at Startup World Cup Grand Finale, which is set to take place on the 17th of May in San Francisco, USA. The winner was determined from the size of market opportunity if the product solves the problem for their target customer, traction, clear revenue model, strong distribution plan, team, and capital efficiency. Other startups that participated at the regional competition were Natterbase, EduPoint, WellNewMe, Sabi, SPLEET, Loystar, Social Lender, Afara Partners, and FarmFunded. “We are humbled to emerge the winner of the Regional competition, and we are excited to represent Nigeria at the grand finale in May. Every startup that competed are amazing and are making great impacts and giant strides in their various fields, and that’s why we’re humbled to come on top as the winner,” says Chidi Nwaogu, Co-founder and CEO of Publiseer, who was recently shortlisted for the Yunus&Youth Global Fellowship Program for Social Entrepreneurs Class of 2019.Publiseer is a digital publisher that helps African writers and musicians from low-income communities to distribute and monetize their creative works across over 400 digital stores in 100 countries, with just a single click, and at no charge. Publiseer became profitable after eight months from inception. The digital publisher has received so many awards and recognitions, including becoming the first and only African publisher to join the International Publishing Distribution Association in Madrid, getting nominated for the 4th AppsAfrica Innovation Awards, receiving ‘The Most Needed in the Region’ award by African Entrepreneurship Award, emerging a finalist at a Harvard Business School New Venture Competition, and participating in the MIT Solve Global Challenges.
Publiseer was listed in Modern Ghana’s “List Of 10 African Innovations For January 2019”. Publiseer has been accepted in several accelerators and incubators, such as Microsoft’s Accelerate Labs, University of Cape Town’s Venture Incubation Programme and Singularity University’s Global Startup Program. The digital publisher has been extensively covered by hundreds of media houses around the world for its exceptional achievements in the world of digital publishing.
