Nigerian startup Tizeti, solar-based internet and voice service provider, is set to expand its operations within Nigeria and Ghana, and into neighbouring Ivory Coast and Togo, in addition to mulling listing its Nigerian subsidiary.
Tizeti, a venture-backed alumnus of the Y Combinator and XL Africa accelerators, is an internet provider that leverages wireless large bandwidth and the falling cost of solar panels to create a low CAPEX/OPEX network of owned and operated towers to offer disruptive, customer-friendly pricing for unlimited internet.
The startup is active across Nigeria and Ghana, where it plans to deepen its operations, and it is also set to expand into Ivory Coast and Togo. With over 2.8 million subscribers on its platform, revenue of over NGN11 billion (US$26 million) over 10 years, and no debt, the company is also exploring an Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Kendall Ananyi said the broadband gap in Africa was still very high and operators like Tizeti must expand to ensure that more Africans have access to reliable, affordable and truly unlimited internet.
“This expansion is very strategic for us and for the continent. We have grown significantly within the last few years, being profitable in three out of the last four years and paid our first dividend this year. We currently have over 3,884 hotspot locations and built one tower every month since we started, with 2.8 million users in Nigeria,” he said.
Today, Tizeti delivers over 190TBPS of data a day, which is about 20 per cent of what Airtel, the second largest telco with coverage in 36 Nigerian states, delivers. It is the leading fixed internet service provider by users and active users in Nigeria today.
“And there’s still so much room for growth. Internet users in Africa are still about 26 per cent of the total population, with almost 900 million people unconnected. We are now exploring the public markets for equity and debt to fund our next growth phase. We have reserved our ticket at NASDAQ, and are exploring London Stock Exchange as we are an LSE-Companies to Inspire, as well as the Nigerian Exchange NGX,” Ananyi said.
