This year has been a year of great milestones for the larger Nailab community and we are proud to announce the acquisition of one of our Season 1 startups, Wezatele. Wezatele has over the last 4 months been working on the acquisition details to ensure smooth transition of the business with AFB, a financial services company that specializes in providing credit products to consumers in Africa.This is one of the largest acquisitions of a startup so far, which is estimated to be over Ksh. 100 million whose value is in both cash and stock.

This to the larger startup community is a great milestone, as it demonstrates that companies are keen on acquiring/merging with local startups that offer value add solutions developed to fit in their larger company offing. In the very words of AFB “ Wezatele brings a lot of value to AFB by being a key technical integration partner”

As Nailab, we have great reasons to celebrate with all our stakeholders as this acquisition not only authenticates the efforts drawn from all our partners to develop solutions with clear value propositions and exits, but also shows the potential in building solutions that pivot on much needed services within different sectors in our economy, this is true innovation. There is great reason to celebrate as we can now see clear fruits of the labor that begun 4 years ago.

Join us in congratulating the Wezatele team for this great achievement.

Hongera Wezatele!

Read more on the Wezatele acquisition:http://wezatele.com/

About Nailab

Nailab (Nairobi Incubation Lab), a startup business incubator launched in 2011, offers an entrepreneurship program focusing on growing innovative technology driven ideas. This is done through providing business advice, technical training and support, professional mentoring and coaching, giving access to market and fostering strategic partnerships as well as linking them to investors. The incubator has so far transformed the lives of over 100 youth, in the country, through entrepreneurial mentorship and training.A great example of one of our startups is Sematime, a bulk sms service solution provider who have in the last 2 years expanded their service offering to over 100 institutions across Kenya. Their customer base ranges from corporates, churches to learning institutions

Out ofthe 35 startups that have gone through the program, we currently have 16 startups that are still operating. 6 out of the 16are operating on profit margins with an average of Ksh 500,000 per month on revenue. Several have gone ahead and been accepted in other growth level incubators with one of them joining one of the leading incubators in Silicon Valley. 3 out of the 6 startups are currently valued at over Ksh 80,000,000.

In 2013 Nailab won the Kenya ICT board contract valued at over $ 1.6M to pilot the tech incubation model for the country. Owing to the contract, Nailab is expected by 2016 to incubate and churn out 30 businesses

Josephine Mwangi, NaiLab