Meet the 26 Nigerian startups among 50 winners of $3m Google Black Founders Fund

Meet the 26 Nigerian startups among 50 winners of $3m Google’s Black Founders Fund

Google's Black Founders Fund is a program that helps African-American entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses.

In the past, Google has demonstrated its commitment to African technology companies by launching the Google for Startups Accelerator Africa program. This time, it intends to assist 50 early-stage African entrepreneurs through its Black Founders Fund, which was established in 2013.

Twenty-six Nigerian technology startups will benefit from the funding provided this year, accounting for more than half of the total number of participants.

Black Founders will invest a total of $5 million in the United States, $2 million in Europe, and $3 million in Africa in its first round of funding. In Africa's rapidly evolving technology landscape, this will help to close the funding gap, which will help to close the gap.

Among the Nigerian businesses that will benefit from this initiative are Babymigo, Bumpa, Chekkit, Credpal, Crop2Cash, Curacel, Emergency Response Africa, Formplus, Gerocare, Gradely, Gricd, Hitch, Lifestores Healthcare, mDoc Healthcare, Medsaf, My-Medicine, Pick Me Up, Reach, Send, Scheduled, Shopa, Tix Africa, Touch and Pay, TradeBuza, and Whispa Health.

These are in addition to the other winners from the remaining 13 African countries from which Google accepted applications, including Finplus, Amitruck, Akiba, and Bengali, who were also announced earlier this month by Google.

In order to accelerate the growth of early-stage black-founded businesses that benefit the African continent's black community, Google has launched a new startup funding initiative.

What Google has to say on the subject

This fund was established in response to the financial and cultural barriers that black founders face on a regular basis, according to Google for Startups' description of the fund. However, while these issues have existed throughout history, the pandemic realities of 2020 have exacerbated their severity.

The covid-19 disaster, which occurred last year, had a wide range of consequences for a large number of tech entrepreneurs. In many cases, office closures isolated employees, and event cancellations isolated founders, and as a result, many founders had to pivot their startups to remain viable and profitable.

What method will be used to distribute this funding?

The $3 million Google fund will be distributed among a pipeline of 50 investable startups in Africa through non-dilutive funding, which means that in exchange for the funding, the founders will retain 100 percent ownership of their companies.

Business owners will be able to use this funding to keep their operations running, pay their employees, and concentrate on growing their companies.

Google announced the funding criteria in June and has now identified 50 African startup companies that will participate in the Africa program, which will begin on October 13th and run for a period of three months.

Rewards

Each startup will receive cash rewards ranging from $50,000 to $100,000, with the amount varying depending on the stage of development, current needs, and previous fundraising success of the company.

The winners will also receive up to $220,000 in Google Ads grants, cloud credits, and support from Google's team of experienced professionals, in addition to the cash prizes.

In his remarks, Nithin Gajria, Google's managing director for Sub-Saharan Africa, stated that "there is a significant gap in terms of financial access." Some organizations do not have the financial resources that other organizations do. That is something we have observed in the case of businesses founded by black and female business owners. And, through the Black Founders Fund, we're attempting to close that gap to some extent."