Nigerian tech company Eden Life gets $1.4m seed funding

Eden Life, a Lagos-based tech startup and Africa’s first home services app for scheduling food and delivery, laundry, and cleaning services, has raised $1.4 million in a seed round led by Local Globe in the United Kingdom, with participation from Samurai Incubate, Future Africa, Village Global, Rising Tide Africa, and Enza Capital. The firm has helped make life a little easier for those living in the ever-bustling city of Lagos by deliberately positioning itself as the go-to platform for home service needs. 

Eden’s total investment in Andela has now reached $2 million, after pre-seed funding from all of the company’s original co-founders and further accelerator support over the last 18 months. While developing a new tech-based platform to help Africa’s service industry improves and flourish, the new funding will be used to expand Eden Life’s in-house technology and establish its world-class kitchens and operations centres.

The company was founded in 2019 by Nadayar Enegesi, Prosper Otemuyiwa and Silm Momoh.  The platform allows customers to schedule three home services such as food, laundry, and cleaning through their mobile application.

The three former founders of the application who called themselves “Andelans ‘ dubbed it “the concierge of comfort.” The app, which is available on Google Play and the App Store, provides users with a subscription service that includes chef-prepared meals, laundry service, and home cleaning, as well as the ability to track the progress of all of their services. Users can choose to subscribe to one or more of the services and how frequently they want them supplied. The average Eden Life customer utilizes two services five times a week, with new users typically beginning with food delivery before moving on to other services.

The company, which is aimed at executives, remote workers, creatives, tech engineers and developers, is removing barriers to finding dependable household services in the city, and has already attracted 600+ customers and is rapidly growing a loyal following, with a 92% monthly retention rate and over 70% of new users coming from referrals.

When the app was launched, it was surprising to see Enegesi and his co-founders choose to tackle a space many thought couldn’t be profitable for a Nigerian tech company. At the time, founders were increasingly launching ventures in fintech, e-commerce, and logistics, so it was surprising to see Enegesi and his co-founders choose to tackle a space many felt couldn’t be profitable for a tech company in Nigeria. 

In an interview, Enegesi, the startup’s CEO and a co-founder of unicorn Andela said, “The cause was personal for us.” The founders began discussing the concept of home services at the same time that the now-famous idea of Nigerians fleeing en masse in search of brighter pastures was gaining traction.

“Many of our users aren’t being productive if they’re cooking or running errands; they don’t want interruptions from their work, which is where Eden Life comes in,” said Nadayar Enegesi, Co-Founder of Eden Life and Andela.

“We’re all too familiar with this scenario. We are those folks, so we created a product with us in mind and realized that we are a rather huge market in Nigeria, so we scaled Eden with other professionals from various walks of life who need simple chores completed with no bother.”

“While we can’t literally, generate more time, we can provide access to a platform that delivers a seamless mix of domestic services, allowing busy professionals to focus on their job and leisure,” Enegesi stated. We’re delighted to expand our platform and continue to provide some of the highest-quality services possible, backed by world-class technology and a highly trained staff of professionals.” 

By 2025, Africa is expected to have 100 cities with populations exceeding one million people, making it the world’s fastest urbanizing continent. Due to the quickly rising IT sector, Africa also has the fastest-growing middle class, with rapidly increasing spending power. As more people work long hours, Eden hopes to revolutionize the home services market by making life easier for the chronically time-poor tech-native professionals and executives. This will allow them to channel their time into more productive pursuits while also affording them more quality leisure time. Eden presently has no intentions to grow outside of Lagos, according to CEO Nadayar Enegesi, because they want to perfect their operations in the state first.

“Lagos is a difficult market, and we need to make sure everything is in working order,” Enegesi said. “We’ve got to keep fine-tuning, and our current focus is on making this thing as fluid as possible.” After that, we’ll start talking about where we should expand next.” 

“Eden Life’s concept for the future of home care in Africa captivated us. Client focus is at the core of what they’re doing, as seen by customer retention and other crucial KPIs,” stated Remus Brett, General Partner at Local Globe. “As investors, we are always drawn to companies who are first to market with products in undeveloped markets. Eden Life is on an exciting growth path because of this edge and a core team with demonstrated experience taking African tech to unrivalled levels.”

Eden intends to invest the secured funds in in-house technologies, talent recruiting, and food manufacturing. In the next months, the hospitality company will also roll out more horizontal items and consider operational centres for distribution. 

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