ThriveAgric, a Nigerian Agritech startup has emerged the winner of Visa Everywhere Initiative beating four other finalists to represent the CEMEA (Central Europe, Middle East, Africa) region at global finals event taking place in Qatar in November 2022. ThriveAgric also goes home with $25,000 as the grand prize.
The five finalists that competed in the CEMEA Visa Everywhere Regional Finale are:
- CarePay (Nigeria) is an aggregator of health services, driving accessibility and affordability of healthcare services through insurance and discount plans.
- Qlub (United Arab Emirates) provides a payment solution for restaurants where customers can view, split and pay their bill simply through scanning a QR code. Other functionalities include ordering and data analytics, simplifying and digitizing the E2E restaurant experience.
- ThriveAgric (Nigeria) is an agriculture technology company that enables strategic partnerships with financial institutions and agriculture value chain players to provide smallholders with financial services, agriculture inputs, extension, market linkage, e-commerce, and payment services.
- Negabty (Egypt) is a mobile platform that automates the services of syndicates and eases the connection with its members. Users can access medical health solutions across the platform and other key financial services, all provided with different payment solutions.
- NQOODLET (Saudi Arabia) is a unified digital platform to help SMEs manage their expenses and purchases easily.
The Visa Everywhere Initiative is an open innovation programme that helps startups unlock new growth and partnership opportunities. It also provides startups with a global platform to demonstrate their ground-breaking solutions. The program first launched in the U.S. in 2015 and quickly expanded into a global program. To date, 8,500 startups have participated, and have collectively raised more than $16 billion in funding.
The other winners at the CEMEA final were
- NQOODLET which won the Visa Direct award and $10,000 and
- CarePay which won the Audience Favourite and $10,000
The CEMEA [Central Europe, Middle East, Africa] regional winner will join regional winners from North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America to compete for the global prize at the global finals event in Qatar in November 2022.
Recently ThriveAgric, raised $56.4 million in debt funding from local commercial banks and institutional investors to grow its 200,000+ farmer base, and expand into new African markets, including Ghana, Zambia, and Kenya.
