Stears Business, a digital media and information firm in Nigeria, has raised a seed investment of $600,000.
The seed round was led by a Nigerian-based fund with participation from Luminate, a philanthropic organisation which is a part of the Omidyar Group, and another unannounced local venture capital firm.
In 2017, Stears started out in the London School of Economics as a media publication focused on financial news in Nigeria.
Led by Preston Ideh, Abdul Abdulrahim, Foluso Ogunlana, and Michael Famoroti, the publication pivoted into the information services industry after observing the challenge of finding high-quality sources of information across Nigeria and realising the impact that an advertising-driven revenue model could have on editorial independence.
The three-year-old startup currently owns Stears Business, a niche media publication focused on economics, finance, and policymaking in Nigeria, as well as Stears Data, its data collection, research, and analytics division.
With the investment, Stears will be acquiring talent, continuing data collecting, exploring new business models, and launching CoreData, a digital data platform that enables governments and corporations access economic and demographic data on a sub-national level across the country, in June 2020.
