Three Ghanaian star-ups, KudiGO, Zuberi and Built have received funding from Google for Start-ups Black Founders Fund for Africa.
This was at an event held in Abuja, Nigeria on Tuesday, September 6, 2022, attended by Nigerian government officials, Google representatives and some of the beneficiaries.
The three were among 60 Africa start-ups that benefitted from this year’s $4 million funding round, which provided each of the beneficiary start-ups with between $50,000 and $100,000 in equity-free cash awards.
Each of the start-ups, 50% of which are led by women, also receive up to $200,000 in Cloud credits, six-months mentorship and training, as well as technical and scaling support from Google.
Other beneficiaries were from Nigeria – 23, Kenya – 12, Rwanda – 6, South Africa – 5, Uganda – 4, Cameroon – 3 (just like Ghana), Ethiopia – 2, while Botswana and Senegal have one each.
They specialise in sectors such as fintech, healthtech, e-commerce, logistics, agritech, edtech, hospitality and smart cities.
Applications for this year’s award opened in May 2022, and after months of review, 60 founders were selected for funding.
KudiGO is a Ghanaian digital commerce startup which offers an omnichannel commerce solution for retail businesses. KudiGo’s Storefront solution is used by over 60,000 businesses in Ghana and Nigeria offering their solutions such as Retail Software, E-commerce, Payments and more.
In a brief statement, KudiGo said they intend to use this support from Google to roll out a digital commerce literacy program to equip 20,000 businesses with the needed skill set to take their business to the next level and to digitize their business with commerce tools.
Zuberi, on the other hand, is a financial community for Africa’s hardest workers, building a platform for workers who want to access and manage their money on-demand through a suite a financial products.
The company said it will apply the Google support into improving the platform to serve even more of Africa’s hardest workers.
Built, which prides itself with democratizing prosperity, provides an all-in-one finance software aimed at boosting SME productivity and growth. The platform comes with invoicing, POS, payments, payroll, and accounting apps for both service businesses and wholesale/retail businesses. Businesses can leverage their data in Built to access loans listed on the platform.
“With the support of Google, we would be working on various digital marketing campaigns targeted at the new markets we are expanding into, that is, Nigeria and Kenya,” the company said in an emailed statement to Techgh24.
Google is uniquely positioned to provide capital and support to help founders grow their businesses, and in turn, create space for founders to thrive and create greater impact for their communities.
The tech giant does this with the firm belief that funding black founders fuels generational change because it creates racial equity, which is inextricably linked to economic opportunities.
