TechVoicesLagos Life maker Vatar raises $500,000 at a $10 million valuation
Flutterwave chief executive Olugbenga Agboola is among the backers of the studio behind the viral browser game. The bet is that a local hit can become a studio, not a one-off.
Illustration. Reporting is based on company statements and published accounts of the round or the bill.
Vatar, the Nigerian studio behind the browser game Lagos Life, has raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding at a reported $10 million valuation.
Olugbenga Agboola, co-founder and chief executive of Flutterwave, invested through his fund Resilience 17. Oo Nwoye, Terra Industries, and Mono co-founders Nathan Nwachuku and Abdulhamid Hassan are also in the round.
Lagos Life spread because it felt local: the city, the hustle, the jokes. A $10 million valuation on a $500,000 cheque is a statement about what investors think comes next — more games, characters, and commercial tie-ins — not about revenue already in the bank.
Nigeria’s games industry has produced viral moments before and durable companies less often. Agboola’s name on the cap table matters because he has already built a payments company at continental scale. Whether that judgement transfers to entertainment is the open question Vatar now has the money to test.
