{"id":10886,"date":"2020-09-03T08:45:30","date_gmt":"2020-09-03T05:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=10886"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:31:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:31:13","slug":"venture-capital-firms-are-collaborating-to-keep-nigerian-startups-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2020\/09\/03\/venture-capital-firms-are-collaborating-to-keep-nigerian-startups-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"Venture Capital Firms Are Collaborating To keep Nigerian Startups Alive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\ufeffInvestment in African startups&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/africa\/1849312\/coronavirus-african-startup-investment-to-slow-down-report\/\">could drop by as much as 40%<\/a>&nbsp;by the end of the year due to the Covid-19 pandemic\u2014but the bigger question for smaller startups is if they will remain alive at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As investors become more risk-averse, industry insiders expect that the funding slowdown to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/africa\/1861034\/what-covid-19-is-doing-to-africas-tech-startups\/\">prove most damaging<\/a>\u00a0for young companies as venture capital likely tilts towards established startups with proven business models. As such, the stark reality for early-stage startups is they may yet be caught in the cross-hairs of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/africa\/1895582\/nigeria-economy-gdp-drops-6-1-percent-in-q2-2020\/\">tough macroeconomic headwinds<\/a>\u00a0that are forcing even far more established startups to layoff staff and cut down costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But in an effort to help startups stay afloat, Ventures Platform, an Abuja, Nigeria-based early-stage fund, is creating\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nisrf.venturesplatform.com\/\">a startup relief program<\/a>\u00a0to disburse emergency grants of up to $20,000 to early, high-growth stage startups that may require cash lifelines. The program has been launched in collaboration with Acumen, a New York based impact investor, and LoftyInc, a Lagos-based investment firm. <a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/africa\/1898258\/nigerian-vc-funds-offer-equity-free-grants-to-struggling-startups\/\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ufeffInvestment in African startups&nbsp;could drop by as much as 40%&nbsp;by the end of the year due to the Covid-19 pandemic\u2014but the bigger question for smaller startups is if they will&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}