TechCabal Daily – TikTok is not a Kippa

27 JANUARY, 2022

THE RACE FOR IBADAN

On Monday, Uber announced that its two-wheeler service, UberMoto, will commence operations in Ibadan, Nigeria’s third-largest city. 

Why is this important?

Well, because many bike-hailing services now have their eyes on the state. Most bike-hailing services were centred in Lagos, Nigeria’s most populated city, but a government ban on tricycles and motorcycles in 2020 sent them rolling away. 

Now, most are steering their attention towards Ibadan. Ibadan has a population of 3.5 million so there’s a demand for affordable and fast transportation. It also has close proximity to Lagos, about 137 kilometres, which means that most services that launched in Lagos could easily port to the city. 

So who’s in the race?

Uber, of course. There’s also SafeBoda, MAX.ng, Gokada, and ORide. 

While players like ORide, Gokada, and MAX.ng launched their motorcycle hailing businesses in Lagos and later moved to Ibadan, SafeBoda kicked off its 2019 expansion into Nigeria in Ibadan. By April 2021, SafeBoda had completed over 1 million rides with over 2,500 drivers and 40,000 customers in Ibadan alone.

In whose seat do the passengers sit?

The race for Ibadan’s market share hinges on whichever player can offer drivers the best terms and riders superior user experience at affordable rates. 

So far, it seems UberMoto appears to be doing better on the pricing level. “A ₦300 ($0.72) trip on SafeBoda could go for around ₦200 ($0.48) on UberMoto. But I think Uber is still significantly cheaper because the service is new,” a user said. 

FROM TIKTOK TO KIPPA

Leaving a budding career at social media behemoth that has big ambitions on your home continent, to launch a startup, sounds like a career suicidal move. But for 23-year-old Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph who co-led TikTok’s foray into Africa, it wasn’t. That much became clear when his startup attracted record seed funding.

Ekezie-Joseph’s startup, Kippa, is a bookkeeping and finance app that he founded with his brother, Duke Ekezie, and Jephthah Uche in February 2021. It has had a meteoric trajectory since its launch in June.

Backstory: At 16, Ezekie-Joseph was a top international debater and had founded a social enterprise that worked to end the practice of female genital mutilation and increase access to education for young girls in Nigeria.

He was an early recipient of the prestigious Yenching Scholarship and holds a masters degree from the elite Peking University in Beijing, China. He’s a two-time TEDx speaker and a Barack Obama Young African Leaders Fellow. All these experiences, including leaving TikTok, gave Ekezie-Joseph big ambitions which birthed Kippa.

It’s a Kippa

Kippa provides SMEs with free, easy-to-use accounting software. The company uses their books to determine which businesses qualify for financing, and charges interest on the credit.

In November last year, Kippa raised $3.2 million in pre-seed funding, arguably one of the largest early-stage fund-raises in Africa.

To date, more than a billion dollars in transactions have been recorded by the platform, according to the founders.

In this article, Damilare Dosunmu digs deeper into Kippa’s story and the founder’s journey so far.

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NOW PLAYING: RENTING NFTs

While people across the globe understandably struggle to grasp what NFTs are all about, others are innovating around the digital concept. 

In the latest innovation, people are now renting out NFTs, and the land token lords are raking in earnings from it. 

Wait, what?!

Well, people play games professionally, and they earn from it too.

Across the world, game players are now renting NFT skins, creatures and tools to use during gameplay. These kinds of NFTs are either a requirement for playing the game like in Axie Infinity, or they give the player an edge like Sorare or The Sandbox. 

While affluent players can flat out buy the NFTs needed and gain advantages, other low-earners have to rent if they want to compete on a global level. In renting NFTs in games—a concept called scholarship—individuals or companies can buy these NFTs and then rent them out to players in exchange for a percentage of the players’ earnings. 

How huge is the market?

Last year, a leading lender, Yield Yield Games, raised $4.6 million at a $3 billion valuation in a round led by VC firm Andreesen Horowitz. Another, GuildFi, raised $6 million. 

Each has hundreds of players who rely on the companies’ libraries to help advance their gameplay. 

The downside?

NFTs are pretty expensive to buy, and they’re just as expensive to rent. This Fortune article explores how the scholarship concept is exploitative because—like everything else—it targets low-earners. Some lenders like Axie University charge players up to 60% of their earnings as rent. 

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EVENT: WHAT IS IN THE NIGERIAN STARTUP BILL?

Early last year, stakeholders in Nigeria’s tech ecosystem began talks around the need for a bill to regulate startup activities in the country. Recently, the bill was approved by the country’s Federal Executive Council and has moved to the National Assembly to be signed into law. 

To help the startup community understand the key provisions of the bill, the NSB is hosting startups and other stakeholders within the industry to a webinar this Saturday, Jan 28th at 12 PM (WAT).

At this event, stakeholders will learn the content of the bill, how it adequately represents their interests, and how they can best position themselves to take advantage of the bill’s provisions.

Speaking at the event are:

• Davidson Oturu – Partner/Head of Tech, Aelex Legal
• Ifeoma Uddoh – Strategy Lead, Shecluded
• Temi Awogboro – Executive Director, Evercare Hospital
• Deji Sarumi – Co-founder, Tech Hive
• Eloho Omame – Co-founder, FirstCheck Africa
• Yewande Adewusi – Regional Director, BBC Africa

Register here to attend.

OPPORTUNITIES

• The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has announced the second Next Innovation with Japan (NINJA) competition 2022. The competition is open to Tanzanian startups (profit and non-profit organisations) that have innovative products, services or business models adaptable to social issues/problems in the sectors of agriculture, health, water, energy, transportation and industrial development. Selected startups with receive up to $8,500 in grants, as well as technical support. Check it out. 

• The Hacklab Foundation Developer Survey is now open to anyone who wants to help provide an open database and actionable insights on developers in Ghana. Responses to the survey will be anonymised and responders will be eligible to receive GHs 500 ($80) and souvenirs from the Hacklab Foundation. Share with Hacklab. 

• The Urban Innovative Challenge for Emerging Cities is now open to applications from entrepreneurs building real-world urbantech solutions. Early-stage startups and teams based in Lagos, Nairobi and Kigali can apply to get the opportunity to become Technology Pioneers at the World Economic Forum, and $25,000 worth of AWS credits. Build here. 

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