AirSmat today announced it has joined ​NVIDIA Inception​, a program designed to nurture startups revolutionizing industries with advancements in AI and data sciences.

AirSmat is focused on helping businesses harness the power of drone and satellite data.

Our approach in capturing data, ingesting data to our platform, and processing same in an intelligent way and its ability to digest large amounts of data and draw precise conclusions will help businesses gain insight into creative, beneficial strategies for the future.

We are starting out with data intelligence in farming. AirSmat is on a journey to ensure food security in Nigeria and the African continent by helping farmers and farm owners have access to useful intelligence that helps them take proactive steps to solve problems on their farms before the harvest season.

With this, we are sure of maximum yield for farmers, increased profitability, and cascading effect of food security for Nigerians and everyone on the continent. We are starting out in Nigeria, but our market is Africa.

NVIDIA Inception will allow AirSmat the needed tailwind for AirSmat and the implication is clear – Artificial Intelligence capabilities development on a steroid.

AirSmat will not only network with fellow startups, venture capitalists, and industry leaders at exclusive Inception events but have access to industry-leading technical guidance on which GPU-accelerated platforms, tools, and hardware in addition to co-marketing support from NVIDIA marketing channel.

The program will also offer AirSmat the opportunity to collaborate with industry-leading experts and other AI-driven organizations.

“Being part of NVIDIA accelerator program is a major milestone in our journey to build a world-class pan-Africa AI-driven business” AirSmat CTO, Adeoluwa Ibikunle reiterated.

According to the CTO, “AirSmat’s simple goal is – Using AI, we save farmers and farm owners valuable time and resources in identifying problems on their farms before these affect the yield of the planting season; being part of NVDIA accelerator program is the best thing that has happened to AirSmat as it will help us to achieve this goal with precision.”

NVIDIA Inception is a program that helps startups during critical stages of product development, prototyping, and deployment.

Every Inception member gets a custom set of ongoing benefits, such as ​NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute​ credits, marketing support, and technical assistance, that provides startups with fundamental tools to help them grow.

About AirSmat

AirSmat was founded on the belief that Artificial Intelligence will shape the future.

We provide cutting edge AI solutions to many rapidly growing industries adopting drones into daily operations by helping to transform the way businesses collect, manage, and interpret drone data. We help businesses unlock the power of drone and satellite data.

South African pay TV operator Multichoice has announced that it acquired a 20% stake in BetKing, a gambling company with major operations in Nigeria. The value of the deal is said to be worth R1.8 billion.

The BetKing 20% acquisition was disclosed this week by Multichoice CEO, Calvo Mawela, during a news briefing to discuss MultiChoice’s new deals.

READ: CBN allows banks to pay winnings, salaries for 7 banned betting & gaming companies

READ: Africa: South African unemployment rises to 17-year high of 30.8%

What you should know 

Nairametrics reported in 2018 that an estimated 60 million Nigerians between the ages of 18 and 40 were involved in active sports betting, with almost ₦2 billion being spent on sports betting daily in Nigeria. This translates to nearly ₦730 billion in a year.

Several sports betting companies have emerged in the country, such as Bet9ja, Nairabet, Merrybet, Naijabet, BetKing, Sporting Bet, Surebet24, and many others.

READ: Is online sports betting really profitable?

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Nairametrics reported in July that BetKing announced a sponsorship deal with the Football Kenya Federation (FKF). This was adjudged the biggest sponsorship deal in the history of Kenyan football.

Valued at $11 million (1.2 billion Kenyan shilling), the new sponsorship deal will end in 2025. According to the FKF, each club in the Kenyan league will receive 8 million Kenyan Shillings a year ($1= 107.85 Kenyan shillings) thanks to this partnership.

MultiChoice CEO added that sport betting augments their business as sport is major revenue source for the company. He also stated that BetKing has grown fast in Nigeria and plans on expanding to South Africa.

“We have a lot of sport on our platform, and many people that are betting watch more games.” he said.

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“They plan to be pan-African and will be entering South Africa at some stage too,”

Reuters reports that the deal would be valued at $81 million upfront, “with a further $31 million performance-dependent payment possible later.”

READ: DEAL: Nigerian Breweries and NFF sign sponsorship agreement

PayStack, a Nigerian fintech startup, has been acquired by global fintech giant Stripe, in the biggest M&A deal in Nigerian tech and one of the biggest in Nigerian corporate history. Paystack was founded in 2016 by Ezra Olubi and Shola Akinlade.

This was disclosed in a press release seen by Nairametrics. The statement read in part:

“In order to help grow Africa’s online GDP, Stripe has entered into an agreement to acquire Paystack, a technology company based in Lagos that makes it easy for organizations of all sizes to collect payments from around the world.

READ: Nigerian Fintech Startup, Piggybank.ng, secures $1.1M Seed Funding

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“Today, more than 60,000 businesses in Nigeria and Ghana use Paystack to securely collect online and offline payments, launch new business models, and deepen customer relationships.

“Incredibly, Paystack already processes more than half of all online transactions in Nigeria.
Paystack has ambitious plans to expand across the continent and recently started a pilot with businesses in South Africa.

“Stripe and Paystack have been working closely together for some time. In 2018, Stripe led Paystack’s Series. A financing round and has provided ongoing guidance as the company rapidly scaled.”

READ: FairMoney secures EUR 10 million seed funding, to widen mobile banking services in Nigeria 

Following the announcement, TechCrunch on Thursday afternoon reported that Stripe had raised $600 million to invest and acquire payments companies in developing nations. It disclosed that the Nigerian startup had been on Stripe’s bucket list for a while since 2018 when Stripe led an $8 million funding round for PayStack.

Paystack Co-founder Sola Akinlade told TechCrunch that the company was not up for sale when Stripe initially approached for the acquisition; however, the founders are mission-driven and believed Stripe could accelerate it. Akinlade also disclosed PayStack investors, VISA and Tencent also approached to acquire the company.

READ: 3 startup lessons from Kobo360’s $30 million fund raise

“Paystack was not for sale when Stripe approached us.

“For us, it’s about the mission. I’m driven by the mission to accelerate payments on the continent, and I am convinced that Stripe will help us get there faster. It is a very natural move,” Akinlade said.

READ: The “EndSARS” protests and the problem of police reform in Nigeria

Backstory

Nairametrics reported in 2016 when Paystack raised its initial $1.3 Million Seed Funding from both international and homegrown investors.

Founders Ezra Olubi and Shola Akinlade were the toast of the tech space when their company became the first Nigerian tech startup to be accepted into the world-famous Y Combinator program, based in Silicon Valley. They obtained an initial $120,000 seed funding and further technical advice at the program.

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What they are saying

Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, told TC that the deal with PayStack is an enormous opportunity, as African e-commerce grows by 30% every year, which would give Stripe an early footing in the region.

“This is an enormous opportunity,” he said.

“In absolute numbers, Africa may be smaller right now than other regions, but online commerce will grow about 30% every year. And even with wider global declines, online shoppers are growing twice as fast.

READ: New report details how Nigerian fintech companies are expanding their business scopes

“Stripe thinks on a longer time horizon than others, because we are an infrastructure company. We are thinking of what the world will look like in 2040-2050.”

He added that Stripe is also planning  on understanding the ecosystem and keep its eyes  open so it can see where help is needed, as the company does not tie up its investments into “complicated strategic investments.”

Collison said that many companies depend on Stripe’s infrastructure, but with PayStack, the founders have organic input in running their operations.

READ: Meet Sola Akinlade, co-founder of Nigeria’s foremost payment platform Paystack

READ: Paystack explains how it will use Truecaller to verify merchants

Stripe said the announcement of the acquisition was delayed due to the #EndSARS protests across the country.

“A lot of companies have been, let’s say, heavily influenced by Stripe.

“But with Paystack, clearly they’ve put a lot of original thinking into how to do things better. There are some details of Stripe that we consider mistakes, but we can see that Paystack ‘gets it’. It’s clear from the site and from the product sensibilities, and that has nothing to do with them being in Africa or African.”

READ: Nigerian fintech companies raised $600 million in five years – McKinsey Report 

Shola Akinlade said the payments ecosystem is still broken and PayStack is still in its early days. PayStack provides payments API for companies and takes a cut from every transaction. The company has 60,000 customers so far, from SMEs to large cooperation,s and would continue to run independently.

Techcrunch said the full terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, TC confirmed that it is worth over $200 million, making it the largest tech acquisition in Nigerian corporate history.

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What you should know

According to Crunchbase, PayStack has raised $11.7 million so far.