List of Startup Accelerators and Incubators In Nigeria

Starting a company is solitary and challenging especially in Nigeria where the business environment is rough and the cost of doing business is somehow high. This is not peculiar to Nigeria alone, other developing countries and under-developed countries face the same challenges. Therefore working with others going through the same challenges and being mentored and supported makes a huge difference.

In recent time we have seen many startup accelerators launched in Lagos and other part of Nigeria and some are really doing great.

Startup Accelerator will help you make your idea a reality as you learn from seasoned entrepreneurs with track record in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Working with startup accelerator or incubator has its advantage and disadvantage. But the advantages outweigh the disadvantage.

Some of the advantages are: access to mentor, investor, alumni network, funding, office space, media exposure among other benefits. The disadvantage are: Your original vision might be changed or work in different direction, You don’t have time to do other business except to focus on your idea, you spend much time meeting mentors and attending events, giving up a chunk of your company etc.

Below are some of the startup accelerators and incubators in Nigeria

1) The Innovation Ecosystem (Co-creation Hub)

CcHUB is Nigeria’s first open living lab and pre-incubation space designed to be a multi-functional, multi-purpose space where work to catalyze creative social tech ventures take place. The HUB is a place for technologists, social entrepreneurs, government, tech companies, impact investors and hackers in and around Lagos to co-create new solutions to the many social problems in Nigeria.

CcHub functions at the heart of Nigeria’s technology innovation ecosystem as a place to:

• facilitate creative thinking and collaborative problem solving
• encourage technology innovation for improved social accountability in Nigeria
• incubate novel tech ideas that promotes good governance/provision of public services
• encourage shared accountability between technologist & innovators
• serve as a living lab for prototyping and testing socially minded tech tools
• build new skills and competencies
• connect, share, create and find expertise

We start by identifying talented individuals/teams who have ideas and support the development of Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) to solve real local market problems/issues. To date, over fifty (50) ideas have enjoyed support through our Pre-Incubation program prominent of which are BudgIT, WeCyclers, Truppr, Traclist, Genii games, Vacantboards, Jobs In Nigeria, 500 shops, Efiko, Nigerian Constitution app, NaijaTeenz, Open apps, Church+. The program provides idea proponents/teams with mentoring, pre-seed funding, project planning, usability testing and customer validation for their solutions.

Visit http://cchubnigeria.com

2) SPARK

“We are not a fund and we are not an incubator; we are a company that builds companies. We focus on Lagos, Nigeria as the gateway to Africa. We focus on well defined and scalable revenue models. We are a collection of internet people. We are SPARK”.

SPARK’s investments range from $100k – $250k.

The most successful of the SPARK bunch is looking to be Hotels.ng, in spite of having to take on competition from a significantly better funded Rocket Internet counterpart.

Visit Spark here: http://spark.ng/

3) 440NG and L5LAB

440.ng is a joint venture between L5LAB and 88mph investing in start-ups in Africa through a 3 month accelerator program model

Startups can apply for investment from the 1st of May this year, we will make our first investments during August. The startups that receive an investment from us will move their laptop and coffee mug into a co-working space where we will spend 3 months working together with them on getting to market, testing their products, and helping them build a strong investment case for bigger investors. We invest between $10k – $100k USD.

Their portfolio: Jobberman, cheki.com.ng, Oya.com.ng, Kamdora

Visit their website: http://440.ng and http://l5lab.com

4) LEADPATH NIGERIA

LeadPath Nigeria is a seed capital fund that specialises in providing short, medium and long term funding to small and medium sized start-up businesses in high growth technology areas such as software, web and mobile technologies..

We focus on technology entrepreneurs dealing in software applications, mobile applications, electronic payments and big data. Our average investment ranges from $25,000 to $100,000.00 for seed investment and several millions of dollars for follow on funding series, office space and hands-on business support in return for anything from 20 – 40 percent equity.

Does your product eliminate and or reduce the factors an industry competes on while raising and or creating elements the industry has never offered? Then visit Leadpath here http://leadpath.com.ng.

5) iDEA/TechLaunchpad

An initiative of the Nigerian ministry of communications and technology, TechLaunchpad graduated its first class of tech startups on the 7th of March. All eight received undisclosed amounts of funding during the acceleration period and were given use of the iDEA facility that was opened early in 2013 in Yaba for that purpose, among other things.

Whereas the first edition of the TechLaunchpad accelerator was focused on banking, financial services, oil and gas and enterprise solutions, TechLaunchpad 2.0 targets startups that are working on solutions in telecommunications, agriculture and logistics, building and construction and health. Visit TechLaunchPad.

6) WENNOVATION HUB

Launching on the heels of the Co-Creation Hub, the Wennovation Hub adopted a markedly different approach from the former’s incubator model and is one the earliest if not the first technology startup accelerator in Nigeria. Managed by Wole Odetayo, the accelerator currently operates out of the iDEA Hub in Yaba.

Visit http://wennovationhub.com/

7) PASSION INCUBATOR

Passion Incubator provides innovative Start-up entrepreneurs with the most critical resources to launch lean Start-ups that can grow fast and where success can be quickly institutionalized

At Passion Incubator, we are open to a wide array of entrepreneurs. Anyone with a clear business idea that solves a large scale problem will be considered. Passion Incubator, and its core product development team, will build the initial versions (Minimum Viable Product) for each founder team; enabling the founder teams focus on business development early so their startups can quickly gain traction.

Visit http://www.passionincubator.ng

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