Hubpharm Africa’s Sesan Kareem, the pharmacist who turned a family tragedy into a platform that has delivered over 300,000 specialty medicines across Nigerian states was named the grand final’s overall winner at The Gathering On 100 Pitchathon on April 25, 2026.
For Sesan who won the gand price of N15 million, the prize was not the end of a journey but an acceleration of one already well underway.
“It means that we have capital to scale our specialty pharmacy operations,” he said, in the measured language of someone who has learned to speak in solutions rather than celebrations. “We will be able to create additional jobs as the business is growing. It also means that more patients who need specialty medications will be able to live healthy, live longer, avoid complications and early death.” he paused. “So it’s a lot of impact.”
The grand final drew together thirteen founders, ten selected from Friday’s Sesan on and three from Thursday’s, among them Charles Dairo of Kindlybook, whose booking automation platform for beauty and wellness businesses had returned to the stage with the quiet confidence of a company that already knows it belongs.
The field also included Ravasend’s Emmanuel Isika, who had appeared on Day One and been called back as one of the first names elevated by the judges’ scoring system into the final ten; URI Social’s Precious zino, pitching her WhatsApp-native AI social media employee Jane for the third time across three days; and Dulces Jamz, whose founder Oguguah Denzel arrived at the grand final the way he had arrived at every previous day with jars of natural fruit jam for the judges, which they accepted with the gratitude of people who have been sitting in a hall for three days and know quality when they taste it.
MTN Nigeria, the event’s primary sponsor, had placed a substantial institutional bet on the proposition that Nigeria’s youth, its Gen Z founders and Millennial creatives and self-taught engineers, were not a problem to be managed but a resource to be invested in.
Omotayo Ojutalayo, general manager for Enterprise Business at MTN Nigeria, spoke at the close of the grand final, “It’s clear, as you can see, that there’s a lot of talent in Nigeria,” she said. “The talents here that have been displayed are trying to solve our problems. And it’s only if you know the problem and it’s homegrown that you can develop homegrown solutions.”
She went further, tracing the event’s origins to something more rigorous than corporate enthusiasm.
“MTN typically does surveys from time to time to feel the pulse of subscribers,” she explained. “We listen to our youthful subscribers. Some of the things that are here now are things that they have said they want to see. We collated all their ideas, what they wanted to do, and we worked across the organisation and put this together.”
The advert, she added with a smile, says it plainly enough: “If you have to miss your wedding, don’t, but don’t miss The Gathering.”
The grand final concluded with the announcement of the sectoral prizes alongside the overall winner, as a panel of industry-specialist judges delivered verdicts in categories spanning healthtech, fintech, agri-processing and social commerce.
The total prize pool, brought to the competition by the organisers, represented the single largest concentration of direct startup funding assembled under one roof in The Gathering On 100’s history.
The host, closing the proceedings with the rhetorical flair that had carried three days of live broadcasting, reached for Shakespeare: “In every play there is an exit and there is an entrance.”
What the founders leaving the National Stadium with prizes in their hands are entering, he suggested, is something considerably larger than a competition. It is, if the past 100 hours are any guide, the main event.
