Nestcoin Raises $6.45M Pre-Seed To Accelerate Crypto And Web3 Adoption In Africa
Nestcoin, a Black-owned company founded last November with a mission to build, operate, invest in web3 applications and make crypto accessible to everyone, has raised $6.45 million pre-seed.
The company’s products cut across Decentralized Finance (DeFi), media, digital art, and gaming. Described by its founder as a venture collective, it launched its media arm called Breach last year to create bite-sized and informative crypto content for the average African.
It also set up Metaverse Magna (MVM), a gaming guild that introduces users to the world of play-to-earn crypto-powered games like Axie Infinity.
The startup has three ambitious goals for Nestcoins: to have one million monthly transacting users, up to 50 million monthly active users, and get a million of these users to have over $1,000 in their wallets.
The funding will reportedly provide it with the firepower to build these products and several others in its pipeline and a part of the funds will go towards web3 projects.
Africa’s cryptocurrency market grew by 1,200% to $105.6 billion between July 2020 and June 2021, according to research by New-York based research firm Chainalysis. So it is considered a market worth investing in.
The company, with team members in nine countries, has onboarded strategic web3 and traditional investors to back its mission.
These include Alameda Research, Distributed Global, Alter Global, Serena Ventures, A&T Capital, MSA Capital, 4DX Ventures, Raba Capital, Goat.vc, Old Fashion Research, CMT Digital, Electric Capital and Social Capital amongst others
Before starting Nestcoin, founders Yele Bademosi and Taiwo Orilogbon both worked at Bundle Africa, one of the continent’s well-known crypto trading platforms.
Bademosi was the Director of Binance Labs in Africa, overseeing the incubation and development of blockchain projects when he decided to start Bundle as CEO in 2019. Orilogbon was the company’s chief technology officer.
By the time Bademost left, three years after, Bundle was only live in Nigeria and Ghana with less than 100,000 active users. While some might think these are small numbers from a global perspective – no local crypto platform serving just Africa has reached a million customers meaning these numbers are quite good.
