Disha, a “Nigeria-based platform that allows digital creators to curate, sell digital content, create portfolios and receive payments from their audience globally”, has been bought by Flutterwave. I expect this trajectory to accelerate across Nigeria in the next 6 months. We are getting to the phase of consolidation in some of the technology nexus where many startups will struggle to raise growth capital. When that happens, they will sell to the bigger boys and girls.
Tekedia Capital portfolio firm OurPass, a one click checkout tech, which is opening in Toronto acquired Lagos-based Storemia a few months ago, on the same playbook.
Why? Nigeria’s tech space is now having category-kings and whenever that phase is attained, investors look at whatever any upstart will have to go against as they look for growth funds. When investors punt, the kings will magically become the “saviours”, buying whatever that is available on the path.
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If you are building, update your exit thesis because as maturity comes in some sectors with clear winners, follow-up capital may be hard. With Disha, Flutterwave will go into NFT, expanding its growth into new domains. That is more payment processing for the unicorn.
Besides African category-kings, I am also looking at Chinese tech companies. For everything happening in their home nation, do not be surprised if they suddenly refocus in Africa. Many firms would be bought!
To the Disha founders, congrats..
In February, Disha, a Nigeria-based platform that allows digital creators to curate, sell digital content, create portfolios and receive payments from their audience globally, announced that it was closing shop.
Before the news, Disha had bootstrapped to more than 20,000 users; at some point, it claimed to have a monthly growth rate of about 100%. Three days after announcing its shutdown, however, Disha did an about-face and said it was thinking of new options for the company and would share an update once it made a new decision.
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Furthermore, there is an increasing appetite to create, own, sell or share digital experiences such as NFTs. With most of Disha’s customers based in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe, it is well-positioned to facilitate transactions around owning and selling these digital experiences.
Flutterwave knows that, and via this acquisition, the fintech is betting that Disha is its ticket to eat at that growing NFT table, where more than $10 billion was spent just in Q3 2020.
“Disha is a global tool and the global creator economy is enormous, and with NFTs growing in popularity, there’s no limit to how huge the creator economy can grow,” GB said.
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What have we built that we are already dreaming of category-kings and buying off others? Our largest payment platform processes how much monthly, $5 billion? We joke a lot in this part of the world.
How much capital has even been invested in startups before we start fearing of funds drying up? We shouldn’t be treating Nigeria as if it’s Gambia or Gabon, this is a very large country with plenty people. $100 million may mean a lot of money in Gambia, but it’s nothing here, so when we start beating our chest, we need to remember our numbers.
If we really want to grow our economic base and empower our people, we need a better narrative, this American style of ultra capitalist mindset won’t thrive here, it will simply leave many people poor and wounded.
We are not creating enough businesses, we are not scaling many, and we want to entertain prospects of limited funding, both seed and growth phases? We are not thinking deep enough.
We were outplayed in geopolitics, now want to hand capitalists without conscience the rope to hang us? We can frame a better model, and it begins with how we build and support support businesses, we cannot afford to be too transactional in our thinking, no society gets better that way.
While I share your sentiments, one thing I’ve come to realize is that we may have a huge population (though the numbers bandied are questionable) but the purchasing power is really low.
Until we begin to focus on the growth of the earning and spending power of our people those numbers remain as a potential energy