TruQ, a Nigerian startup that provides an operating system for third-party logistics, has secured ₦2.5 million as the winner of the inaugural TC Battlefield, TechCabal’s premier startup competition that is dedicated to showcasing local startups’ innovations to a global audience and esteemed panel of judges to get funding for their businesses.
This edition of TC Battlefield was opened to only startups with Nigeria as the primary market
Meanwhile, Jamit, an audio technology startup that provides recording and hosting services to emerging and professional voices, was announced as the first runner-up with ₦1.5 million.
TruQ and Jamit emerged as winners after pitching alongside eight other startups—during the just concluded Moonshot Conference by TechCabal—to a panel of four judges including Nela Ekpenyong, head of portfolio at Ingressive; Hope Ditlhakanyane, investment principal at Founders Factory Africa; Uwem Uwemakpan, the head of investments at Launch Africa VC Fund II; and Gloria Okorie, a venture partner at Republic.
Know more about TruQ and Jamit
Within three years of its existence, Nigerian logistics startup TruQ has been part of three accelerators—V8 Growth Labs, Techstars and Google Black Founders Fund.
“It’s been a journey of understanding the markets, especially since we started truQ, and how exactly to solve the many problems within the logistics space,” Williams Fatayo, the co-founder and CEO of TruQ, told Bendada.com. “When we launched, what we were trying to do was connect businesses with logistics and we’ve powered over 300,000 deliveries across 25,000 trips to date.”
V8 Growth Lab was their very first investment and it came in their early days. “I won’t call it pre-seed because it was very early when they came in. It was just very much post-launch, but just a week or two after we launched,” Fatayo explained.
Related Article: How truQ got into three accelerators within three years
Founded in 2018 by Stan Agbadugo and Ike Orizu, Jamit describes itself as “the African podcaster’s platform, built with love from Africa, for African podcast listeners and creators”. The startup released its first podcast in 2019, proceeding into podcast production and distribution, and became a podcast platform in 2020.
More than 185 podcasts have been created on Jamit, with a cumulative of over 40,000 episodes. “We also have an array of content on our platform. Amongst these are podcasts that have gained international recognition and partnerships. We create audio drama and will be releasing audiobooks as well. What we always aim to achieve with our content is to express and tell diverse stories through immersive audio experiences,” according to Agbadugo.
