Zone Tech Park, a new venture builder for start-ups in Nigeria, has officially opened for business and is already turning great ideas into products and services quickly, efficiently – and profitably.

Located in Lagos, Zone Tech Park is the brainchild of Bolaji Olagunju (above right), a serial entrepreneur and Founder and CEO of The Workforce Group, Nigeria’s leading HR company.

Toro Orero (above left) has been appointed as CEO of Zone Tech Park and brings vast experience with startups both as a managing partner at Silicon Valley VC Fund DDF and the founder of The African Startup Institute and SpeedUPAfrica.

To date, US$6.5 million has been invested in Zone Tech Park to build the infrastructure and environment needed to help African startups scale and compete globally.

Zone Tech’s startups will have direct access to more than 400 domestic and international corporations who are clients of WorkForce.

Bolaji Olagunju said “African startups are faced with significant challenges that hinder their growth.  Zone Tech will change the status quote and help individuals and their businesses to realise their full potential through education, venture building and strategic enterprise support.”

Zone Tech Park is unique among tech hubs in Africa in a multitude of ways:

• Its open for start-ups at all stages in their life cycle, from those that are a great idea on paper to those with customers already on-board.
• The co-working space is free for start-ups and plugs them into a network of more than 400 corporations, giving them direct access to market, helping them to avoid bottlenecks, strike deals faster, and scale quicker.
• Zone Tech Park supports its start-ups in preparing for funding rounds by giving access to a network of potential investors, accelerator programs, and ecosystem architects.
• An experienced in-house engineering team of 20+ software developers and designers, and entire finance, legal, marketing, sales and fundraising teams, all experts in their field are ready to start work with Zone Tech’s start-ups.

Prior to its official launch, Zone Tech ran a small pilot program and has built two products so far:

• Peerless, a learning management system that already has 10,000+ users and revenues of 100,000 USD.
• Outwork, a staff on-demand solution with 7,000+ users.

Toro Orero, CEO of Zone Tech Park said “We are not another co-working space, we build companies. With the wealth of corporate clientele at our disposal, we have hit the ground running and are already building world-class products, and hosting great startups.”