Podcast Archives - Nairametrics: Recent Episodes
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In this episode, Host Frank delves into the critical lending rates that can shape the future of Nigerian manufacturers. Using the latest Nairametrics data, we spotlight the top five banks offering the most competitive rates, with FBN Quest Merchant Bank leading at 7%, followed by Polaris Bank and Stanbic IBTC at 8%. As businesses struggle […]
The Nigerian Naira’s recent gains against the US dollar are tied to the weakening dollar index ahead of the US Consumer Price Index (CPI) release and the upcoming Federal Reserve rate decision. Joanna explains how the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) supported the naira by selling dollars to local forex dealers, aiding its recovery. Frank […]
Abdulrasheed Momoh, Executive Director of Operations at TRW Stockbrokers Ltd, discusses the effects of the recent fuel price increase on Nigeria’s investment landscape. The conversation explores how investors are reacting, particularly in the consumer goods and industrial sectors, where sales pressures are already evident. As inflation rises and the naira remains under pressure, we examine […]
Explained: Nigeria’s 70% Windfall Tax and Its Economic Necessity! See link: Explained: Nigeria’s 70% Windfall Tax and Its Economic Necessity! A few months ago, the Nigerian govt introduced a 50% windfall tax targeting banks' FX transaction profits from June to Dec 2023. This was part of the revised 2023 Finance Bill submitted to the National […]
In this episode, we dive into the Nigerian stock market’s performance at the start of September 2024. With the All-Share Index declining by 0.15% and trading volumes dropping significantly, we explore the reasons behind the market’s bearish trend. We also discuss the impact on key stocks like Oando, Berger Paints, and Zenith Bank, as well […]
In this episode, we look into the complex relationship between the recent fuel price hikes in Nigeria, the operations of the Dangote Refinery, and the broader economic landscape involving Libya’s oil output and the fluctuating exchange rate. We discuss how global oil supply dynamics, particularly from key players like Libya, influence local fuel prices, and […]
Join us on an exciting journey as we explore the Lagos Blue Line, from Mile 2 to Marina. The check-in process, payment methods, policies, and guidelines, and experience the seamless travel and stunning views of Lagos. Hear stories from fellow commuters and learn key details about the Lagos Rail Mass Transit (LRMT) Blue Line, including […]
In this episode of “Why Dollar Bonds Stand Out: What Makes Them Unique?”, Ugodre takes you through the distinct features and advantages of Nigeria’s Domestic US Dollar Bond. I’ll explain how these bonds differ from traditional Naira bonds and why they’re becoming a hot topic among local and international investors. From attractive interest rates to […]
In this episode, I look into the recent announcement by the US Federal Reserve and its potential impact on the exchange rate between the Naira and the Dollar. I break down what the Fed’s decision means for Nigeria’s economy, how it might influence inflation, and what Nigerians can expect, in terms of forex rates in […]
Welcome to Market Pulse on News Central, in collaboration with Nairametrics. In today’s episode, Joanna Mustapha guides you through the latest stock market movements. We analyze United Capital’s recent price volatility and debate whether it might be overpriced while contrasting it with Transcorp Plc, which seems undervalued despite strong first-half earnings. We also examine International […]
The post UAC is minting profits, Why Oando stock is on fire, Look out for these stocks! appeared first on Nairametrics.
Join Ugodre in the latest quarterly results from major players in the telecommunications, consumer goods, and banking sectors. He unpacks how inflation and currency devaluation have impacted MTN Nigeria and Airtel Africa, analyzes the struggles of consumer goods giants like Dangote Sugar and Nestle Nigeria, and celebrates the impressive gains in the banking sector with […]
The post Market Shifts: Telecom Giants, Consumer Goods Struggles, and Banking Booms! appeared first on Nairametrics.
Ugodre informs why now is the best time to invest in Treasury Bills. He covers the benefits of Treasury Bills, current market conditions, and how you can take advantage of this low-risk investment to secure your financial future. Tune in to learn more about maximizing your returns with Treasury Bills.
The post Why it’s the best time to invest in Treasury Bills! appeared first on Nairametrics.
This episode of “Everyday Money Matters” tackles financial transparency in relationships. Should your partner know how much you earn? We’ll explore the pros and cons of sharing financial information with your significant other, how it can impact your relationship, and tips for having open and honest money conversations. Join us as we discuss real-life experiences […]
The post Should Your Partner Know How Much You Earn? appeared first on Nairametrics.
In this video, Ugodre explores how the recent US Federal Reserve interest rate cut impacts the Naira exchange rate. Breaking down the economic factors, what this means for Nigeria’s economy, and how it affects everyday transactions and investments. Watch to understand the broader implications of this financial move.
The post What US Fed Cut on interest rate means for Naira Exchange Rate! appeared first on Nairametrics.
On today’s Money Brief, Ugodre clears up the confusion surrounding public offers, rights issues, and share prices. He breaks down what each term means and how they affect your investments, helping you make informed decisions in the stock market.
The post Money Brief: Public Offers, Rights Issues, and Share Prices Explained! appeared first on Nairametrics.
In this episode, Ugodre speaks to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s recent mandate on dormant accounts and its implications for account holders. He also sheds light on the contentious issue of windfall taxes – what they are, why they matter, and their potential impact on businesses and the economy. He examines the factors behind the […]
The post CBN’s Dormant Accounts, Windfall Taxes, and more appeared first on Nairametrics.
Ugodre exposes the risks and red flags associated with certain stock sellers. He highlights the warning signs of schemes and unreliable companies, helping you make informed investment decisions. Learn how to protect your money and avoid common pitfalls in the stock market.
The post WARNING!!! Don’t buy stocks from these people. appeared first on Nairametrics.
In this episode, we look to share insights into the age-old debate of 9 to 5 jobs versus entrepreneurship. With the gig economy booming and the allure of being your own boss growing stronger, more people are questioning which path is the right one for them. We’ll explore the pros and cons of both lifestyles, […]
The post 9 to 5 vs. Entrepreneurship: Which Path Leads to Success? appeared first on Nairametrics.
The post United Capital is paying a 2 for 1 bonus…share price is on a tear appeared first on Nairametrics.
Treasury Bills @26% or buy dollars? Here is What I told an investor who has N50 million to play with…FTM Daily Podcast by Ugodre
The post Treasury Bills vs Buying USD!!! appeared first on Nairametrics.
Something happened to United Capital today that has never happened before”…Find out on FTB Daily Podcast by Ugodre
The post What is going on? United Capital stocks are up by 43.48% year to date!!! appeared first on Nairametrics.
This time, Ugodre sits with financial expert Muktar Mohammed to shed light on some pressing topics in the banking sector. Here’s what he covered: Why Access Bank Issued Shares Price Higher Than Its Market Price Uncover the reasoning behind Access Bank’s recent decision to issue shares at a price higher than the market rate. What […]
The post Strategic Capital Moves – Access Bank’s Share Issuance and GTCO’s N400.5 Billion Fundraise appeared first on Nairametrics.
In a landmark decision, Nigeria’s Supreme Court has granted full financial autonomy to the nation’s 774 local government areas (LGAs). This ruling signifies a transformative shift in grassroots governance, promising to decentralize power, reduce state interference, and enhance transparency and accountability in local administration. Nairametrics held an X session on July 11, 2024, featuring key […]
The post Supreme Court Grants Financial Autonomy to Nigeria’s 774 LGAs: Insights from Nairametrics X Spaces appeared first on Nairametrics.
In this episode of FTM Daily, we examine Vitafoam and the reasons behind its 9% gain. Despite facing significant headwinds in its current financial year, including losses from forex devaluation impacting its bottom line, the company has shown resilience. But should these challenges deter you from buying the stock? Tune in to hear Ugodre’s thoughts […]
The post Why Vitafoam gained 9% today! appeared first on Nairametrics.
The post Access Bank Offer: Only reason why I am buying appeared first on Nairametrics.
In this thought-provoking episode of our podcast, we discuss whether to stay in Nigeria (Naija) or seek opportunities abroad (Japa). We will share our journeys, revealing the factors of our decisions and the realities we face. Subscribe and catch up on our Spotify channel
The post Everyday Money Matters – Japa or Naija? appeared first on Nairametrics.
In this episode, Ugodre looks into the latest buzz in the Nigerian financial markets. He discusses the appointment of NGX’s new CEO, Oando’s dramatic stock movements, and the record-breaking growth of Nigeria’s pension fund industry. He also touched on Access Bank’s ambitious rights issue and highlighted the best-performing stocks in the first half of 2024. […]
The post Market Moves: NGX’s New CEO, Oando’s Rollercoaster, and Top Performing Stocks in H1 2024 appeared first on Nairametrics.
Welcome to this week’s episode of FTM, your go-to podcast for all things related to the Nigerian stock market. In today’s episode, we look into some of the most exciting developments shaking up the market right now. Here’s what’s on the agenda: Fidelity Bank IPO – Bull or Bear?: We analyze the much-anticipated Fidelity Bank […]
The post Nigerian Stock Market Shake Up Fidelity Bank IPO – FBNHs New Majority Shareholder and Top Stock Picks appeared first on Nairametrics.
In the latest episode of “Follow the Money with Ugodre,” we analyzed a busy week filled with crucial economic updates and market movements. Last week, key macroeconomic numbers were released, including GDP figures and the outcomes of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting. The MPC voted to increase the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) by 150 […]
The post MPC Meeting, GDP Growth, and Market Declines! appeared first on Nairametrics.
In the latest episode of “Follow the Money with Ugodre,” co-hosted by Uade Ahimie, we were joined by Dr. Paul Uzum, Director at Halo Nigeria Capital Management Limited. The NGX All-Share Index (ASI) depreciated by 0.11%, and the market capitalization fell by 0.1%, closing at 98,000 points. The NGX 30 also saw a slight decline, […]
The post ASI Declines Amid CBN Recapitalization, Anticipation Builds for MPC Meeting, MRS Delisting, and Seplat Dividend Approval appeared first on Nairametrics.
In the latest episode of “Follow the Money with Ugodre,” powered by Nairametrics, we delved into last week’s bustling financial landscape. The All-Share Index (ASI) experienced 1.36% depreciation, alongside a 1.35% drop in market capitalization. Despite this, the stock market still boasted an impressive 31% gain. However, the NGX 30 index took a hit, dropping […]
The post ASI Declines, Banking Index Dips 18%, Inflation Index Expected This Week! appeared first on Nairametrics.
This week on “Follow the Money” with Ugodre and Uade Ahimie, we welcomed Uche Joshua Ifeakanwa, Managing Director of RUUSTALLION NIG LTD, to discuss the latest market movements. The week was marked by losses driven primarily by banks amid concerns over the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) recapitalization measures.The All-Share Index (ASI) depreciated by 1.39%, […]
The post NGX Turbulence, MRS Oil’s Delisting, Stanbic IBTC Raises Capital! appeared first on Nairametrics.
This week on “Follow the Money,” our host Ugodre and Uade Ahimie were joined by Oladipo Ajayi, Head of Fixed Income at Chapel Denham, who provided valuable insights into the current market conditions. Stocks experienced another downward trend, with the All-Share Index dropping by 2.71% to close at 99,539.75 points, and market capitalization at 56.29 […]
The post Stocks Decline Amid Currency Fluctuations, Nestle Nigeria Reports Forex Losses appeared first on Nairametrics.
This week on “Follow the Money with Ugodre,” we observed significant shifts in Nigeria’s financial landscape: The All-Share Index (ASI) dipped by 1%, suggesting a bearish trend in the stock market. Stockbrokers anticipate lower share prices, particularly due to expected bank capitalization measures. Three major Nigerian banks (UBA, GTCO, and Zenith Bank) are issuing substantial […]
The post Stocks Drop, Dividends Surge, and Canal+ Makes a Bold Move! appeared first on Nairametrics.
This week on “Follow the Money with Ugodre,” we delved into several key topics shaping Nigeria’s economic landscape. Firstly, we focused on the earnings blitz, particularly spotlighting manufacturing companies and the C. Despite notable efforts, the All-Share Index (ASI) experienced a slight depreciation of 0.08%, with the market capitalization also dropping to 59 trillion Naira. […]
The post Stock Market Slide, Bank Recapitalization Anxiety, and Fuel Subsidy Struggles! appeared first on Nairametrics.
In this week’s episode of “Follow the Money,” Ugodre spoke about reports revealing that one of the detained Binance executives managed to escape authorities, adding a dramatic twist to the unfolding situation. It is said he was allowed to carry out his Islamic rights in one of the nearby mosques. Also, Ugodre spoke about Nigeria’s […]
The post Dilemma: Binance Executive Escapes Custody + Nigeria’s Debt Nears 100 Trillion Mark appeared first on Nairametrics.
This week on “Follow the Money,” Ugodre provided insights into the exceptional performance of Nigerian stocks, which have established themselves as the benchmark for investment. With no other investment avenue yet to outperform the stock market, investors continue to flock to Nigerian equities. The NGX witnessed a significant rise of 3.71%, closing at an impressive […]
The post Nigeria’s Stock Market Buzz, ASI soars, GTCo hits top 5 gainers, Banks brace for capital surge appeared first on Nairametrics.
In today’s edition of Follow The Money with Ugodre, we dive deep into the dynamics surrounding the dollar, with the CBN reporting an influx of over 1 billion dollars into the economy for the month of February alone. Additionally, our host also analyzed the ongoing upward trend in interest rates. More insights were given on […]
The post 1 Billion Dollars coming into Nigeria and why you should bet on the Naira appeared first on Nairametrics.
This week on “Follow the Money,” Ugodre delved into the latest developments in the financial markets. He discussed the significant drop in the NGX all share index by 3.37% as stocks experienced a bearish run, notably experiencing a pullback on Wednesday. Suspicions arose regarding the cause, with the increase in interest rates by the Central […]
The post NGX Index dropped at 3.27% – Investors become bearish wary of the current stock market appeared first on Nairametrics.
This week on “Follow the Money” with Ugodre, our host Ugodre Obi-Chukwu had an insightful conversation with a special guest, Tosin Adewuye, the Executive Director of First Bank Plc. They discussed FirstBank’s recent recognition as Nigeria’s Best Corporate Bank at the Euromoney Awards for Excellence 2023. The discussion highlighted the bank’s dedication to financial inclusion […]
The post The CBN sold an impressive N1.5 Trillion in Treasury Bills NGX ASI fell by 3.44 during the week appeared first on Nairametrics.
In this week’s edition of Follow The Money with Ugodre, we were delighted to host esteemed guest Joseph Edgar, widely recognized as the Duke of Shomolu, as he shared invaluable insights into strategies for attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Alongside, we delved into the latest market movements, witnessing the All-Share Index (ASI) soaring to an […]
The post Overview of the Nigerian Economy: Attracting FDIs, ASI at 105.722, and Market Capitalization at 57.8 Trillion appeared first on Nairametrics.
The Nigerian equities market recorded WoW gains for the Seventh consecutive week as the All-Share index and market capitalization closed at 1.18% WoW to reach 72,389.23pts and N39.613 trillion respectively. Consequently, the Year-to-Date return rose to 41.24%. Across sectors, performance was mixed as the NGXBNK (+7.01% WoW), NGXCNSMRGDS (+0.22% WoW) and NGXINDUSTR (+0.24%) recorded gains while the NGXOILGAS (-0.27% WoW), and NGXINS (-0.96%WoW) closed down […]
The post Inflation blues but Stocks don’t care, reflecting on the Legacy of Herbert Wigwe appeared first on Nairametrics.
Last week, the CBN shook the financial landscape with significant measures, as detailed in 'Follow the Money with Ugodre.
The post Results Blitz: Airtel, BUA foods, Okomu, Fidelity, Wema – Follow the Money appeared first on Nairametrics.
In 'Follow the Money with Ugodre,' we explored the recent surge in the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) as the all-share index appreciated by an impressive 8.3%, reaching a record high of 102,401.88.
The post The Nigerian Stock Exchange is now 25% of our GDP – Follow the Money appeared first on Nairametrics.
In Episode 4 of Follow the Money with Ugodre, highlights of the 2024 budget proposal kicked off proceedings.
The post FollowtheMoney with Ugodre: 2024 Budget Proposal, NAFEM is still Swinging, NGX’s incredible performance appeared first on Nairametrics.
Ugo started with the teeter-tottering nature of the Naira over the previous week. For example, on Thursday, the official exchange rate hit its highest-ever value of N996, only to return to N780 the next day, a huge disparity of N216.
The post Exchange rate, Saudi Arabia, and inflation rate- First episode of Follow the Money with Ugodre appeared first on Nairametrics.
Nigerian startups are looking to attract investors managing over $1 trillion in assets as they showcased their product solutions at the Gitex Global event in Dubai.
The post Nigerian startups eye investors worth over $1 trillion in assets at Dubai appeared first on Nairametrics.
The Nigerian healthcare startup, Wellahealth has launched its subsidiary, Healthsend Africa in Kenya. Healthsend Africa was launched in Nigeria in June 2023.
The post Nigerian healthcare startup, WellaHealth’s Healthsend expands into Kenya appeared first on Nairametrics.
SAIS is announcing its IRP a year-long initiative aimed at securing investments and fostering the growth of technology startups.
The post GIZ announces its 2024 investment programme for tech startups appeared first on Nairametrics.
In this interview with Nairametrics, the founder of Kippa Africa speaks on the success factors for startups, the dwindling funding, and what tech entrepreneurs need to do to stay afloat in a tough operating environment like Nigeria.
The post Fundraising is not a measure of success for startups – Kennedy Ekezie appeared first on Nairametrics.
In the latest episode of Business Half Hour with Nairametrics, Mr. Charles Edosomwan, CEO of TekSight Edge Limited, discussed the innovative approach his PR company takes in digital marketing.
The post VIDEO: Navigating the digital marketing landscape, insights from TekSight Edge CEO appeared first on Nairametrics.
MEST Africa Challenge is an opportunity for startups to secure an equity investment of USD 50,000, a financial boost that fuels their journey toward accelerated business expansion.
The post Nigerian startups in tech, medical research to qualify for $50,000 equity investment appeared first on Nairametrics.
The Statistician-General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of the National Bureau of Statistics, Mr. Semiu Adeyemi Adeniran, has announced that the bureau is now following new guidelines established by the International Labour Organization (ILO) to determine the current employment rate.
The post VIDEO: How we arrived at 4.1% unemployment rate – Statistician General appeared first on Nairametrics.
On today’s episode of Business Half Hour with Nairametrics on Classic FM, we had the privilege of hosting the CEO of Awabah, Mr. Tunji Andrews, who introduced Awabah's groundbreaking mission, which is creating accessible insurance for everyday Nigerians.
The post VIDEO: Empowering Nigerians through Accessible Insurance: A Conversation with Awabah’s CEO appeared first on Nairametrics.
Buki Osunkeye, has said that the federal government would need the help of experts in the startup industry to disburse the proposed N10 billion annual startup funds to achieve transparency.
The post Why FG needs industry experts to disburse N10 billion startup fund – Buki Osunkeye appeared first on Nairametrics.
ENRICH in Africa (EiA) in collaboration with the Co-creation hub (CcHub) has launched its Africa to Europe scaling the programme to support high-potential African startups to scale into the European market.
The post EiA launches program for African startups to scale to Europe appeared first on Nairametrics.
On this episode of OnTheMoney the Nairametrics guest speakers discussed several economic issues including the central bank's MPR of 18.75%, Nigeria's exchange rate pressures, and the latest earnings from FMCGs and Nigerian banks.
The post Should Saudi Arabia lend Nigeria $10 billion to solve FX Supply issues? appeared first on Nairametrics.
This article looks at what startup founders are saying about Nigeria's presidential and senatorial elections
The post What startup founders are saying about the 2023 presidential election appeared first on Nairametrics.
Babatunde Akin-Moses and his co-founders, Mayowa Adeosun and Onyinye Okonji, started Sycamore in their living room four years ago
The post BHH: How Akin-Moses and his Co-founders built Sycamore from their living room appeared first on Nairametrics.
Dr Adereni Abiodun is the founder of HelpMum, a tech startup focused mainly on providing safe birth kits and immunisation tracking for mothers in rural and semi-urban areas.
He studied Veterinary medicine at the University of Ibadan and is passionate about reducing the rate of maternal and infant mortality in Africa caused by the gap in healthcare infrastructure and qualified medical personnel.
In this interview with Nairametrics, he speaks on how he was able to raise funds through grants for the HelpMum.
Enjoy the conversation.
NAIRAMETRICS: How did the vision for HelpMum come about? Dr Adereni Abiodun: I was at the University of Ibadan studying Veterinary Science. It was during my studies that I came across a subject where I learnt that the unborn babies of pregnant mothers could develop a congenital infection if they are near an infected animal.
I also noticed that the people in the urban areas are unaware of this and talk less of those in the rural areas. So when I and some friends went to the rural areas to provide sensitisation and free medical services, we noticed their problems were in-depth.
As expected, those in rural areas do not have proper health care, healthcare personnel, or access to healthcare services. This leaves them to give birth to their babies in the homes of traditional birth using unsanitary methods.
After a few healthcare outreaches, it had to be structured as a social enterprise to empower people, make an impact and yet be profitable. This is what led to the creation of the HelpMum clean birth kit.
The kit has essential medical tools and sanitary products, which allows mothers to have a safe birth without a hospital, health centres, community health workers or trained medical personnel in a community.
NAIRAMETRICS: Besides providing safe birth kits, HelpMum also has other products that spin off the original idea. Can you briefly talk about how that came about? Dr Adereni Abiodun: We also noticed that even if mothers have a safe birth and they don’t take their babies for immunisation, the child is likely to come down with whooping cough and other diseases. So in a bid to sensitise mothers on the importance of taking their babies for vaccination, our team came up with a platform that tells community health workers to register anybody who gives birth in their community to be registered through our vaccination tracker. The tracker was built to educate them on why and when children should be immunised, and this has prevented a lot of child mortality.
Another idea came up, which is the e-learning platform which trains community health workers, which can be done via the internet or Bluetooth transfers. Over 3000 community health workers have been trained in over 6-7 states.
We also came up with the HelpMum research, which is the innovation hub for maternal health care in Africa, as a lot of data has been collected which can be used to design innovations. Another product is Adviser, developed in conjunction with Google, which provides information to mothers. It will also be useful by healthcare agencies around the world for pandemic preparedness
NAIRAMETRICS: You have raised a lot of money over the years for HelpMum. How were you able to achieve that?Dr Adereni Abiodun: So far, we have raised close to a million dollars in total. The first funding was at a competition in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2017 for healthcare innovators across Africa. Among 15 innovations, our team won $5000 among three winners. Then the same month, we won $5000 from Tony Elumelu Foundation.
In 2018, Google came with the Google Impact Challenge, and the prize was $250,000 for four social enterprises and $125,000 for 8 social enterprises. We applied and got to the final stage of the pitch and were one of the prize money winners. We won another award from the United Nations in 2018.
In 2020, Facebook came up with the Facebook Community Accelerator Program 2020, where our team won $30,000. An additional $25,000 was won in 2021 by Facebook, making it a total of $55,000. Not stopping there, in 2022, we got $250,000 from a global philanthropic organisation from Boston USA –Patrick JMC Foundation.
Nairametrics: What stood your business idea out and impressed these donors? Dr Adereni Abiodun: We have been successful in raising funds from various platforms, and this could be because we are saving the lives of mothers and children, which is very crucial in any community.
Upon receiving any grant, we take absolute responsibility for ensuring that audited statements and impact reports are out in place. This was done to ensure that any new partner coming on board can view the track record. A YouTube channel was also put in place to showcase the impact of help. This has been very useful in attracting more funding.
Before getting the grant from Google, we displayed absolute honesty and confidence in our work which we always projected with clear evidence.
Nairametrics: Where do you see HelpMum in the future? Dr Adereni Abiodun: For us, we hope the grant money will be used to scale the reach of the products through the community network and expand the use of the vaccination tracker to urban women and community health centres. We believe that to keep the business running, innovation, constant improvement and relevant product creation are needed. For example, to create more visibility of the products, a podcast channel is currently in the works asides from the already existing Youtube channel.
There are also plans for the e-learning content of the app to be scaled to include more Ibo and Hausa languages asides from Yoruba so that more community health workers in those regions will be enabled to use it and save lives. What is most essential is building a sustainable business with social impact.
The post How Dr Adereni Abiodun was able to raise close $1 million for HelpMum appeared first on Nairametrics.
The Chief Executive Officer of Lawboxng, Olusola Adegoke, has highlighted some common legal mistakes people make when starting a small and medium-scale business in the country.
Some of these mistakes include involving one’s family unnecessarily in business, and failure to seek legal advice, amongst others.
Adegoke stated this recently while speaking to Nairametrics during our Business Half Hour programme.
The common mistakes: Commenting on the major mistakes people make when tying the legal end of a contract, she explained that some people often assume that the other person understands their vision or knows where they are heading.
She added that people also make the mistake of involving family and friends in businesses which can get very emotional when things are not going on well, thus causing issues in the family.
- “So I always advise finding a partner that you’re not having blood ties with, then you go into business and you do your research on who they are, what they do, the kind of experience they have, financial standing and all,” she added.
Adegoke added that signing contracts without seeking legal advice considering that certain clauses could be implicated in business is also a be a big deal. She said:
- “There’s a particular clause that people take for granted and that is the exit clause. you realize that when one partner wants to walk away, another person disagrees with some of his terms and it becomes an issue.
- “If the business has no exit clause, you see them going to court, So clauses are very important in business to address questions of; when one party is leaving, what happens? what’s in your exit plan? are you giving out a percentage of the business to this person? Is this person leaving with you know a particular compensation?”
Advice/recommendations: Adegoke said that in addition to an exit clause, business partners should also indicate a Force Majeure clause in case of unforeseen circumstances or anything that could hinder the party from fulfilling the terms of the obligations of the contract.
She advised against attending meetings alone, noting that it is also a big mistake that every business-minded person should avoid.
- “Try not to attend meetings alone. If you cannot afford to go with a lawyer, Please go with an intelligent person or somebody in your circle. when you go to meetings alone, there’s always that likelihood that you could be manipulated into thinking that something works right, but when you have somebody with you, the other person is seeing things differently because this person is neutral, so I always tell people to go to meetings in the company of your lawyer or go with just like a neutral person,” She said.
The post Common legal mistakes small businesses make and how to avoid them – Expert appeared first on Nairametrics.
Talent sourcing for organisations is a big deal, as it is crucial for how employees will execute the visions of such an organisation.
If gotten right, the appropriate talent will take organisations to the next level. However, if gotten wrong, this could spell doom for the future of the company.
In view of this, YF Talent Partners provides organisations with end-to-end HR transformation, leadership, and culture advisory services and constantly helps the organisation to find solutions to their business challenges.
The company collaborates with organisations to make sure they get the right talents, reward the right talents and also help with performance management, learning and development.
Getting the right talents: During Nairametrics’ recently held Half Hour programme, Yemi Faseun, the CEO of YF Talent Partners, shared how the startup partners with organisations to look for talents and match them with their employees from the point of entry to the point of exit.
Explaining how to identify the right talents, he said that organizations are built around systems, processes, structures and people. From a structure and system perspective, there is a job description and expected deliverables for every role.
The ultimate goal, therefore, is to find the perfect fit for every role that will fulfil the job descriptions and also deliver on the expected performance indicators for the role. However, doing this takes a lot of effort, beyond the computer-based test or a one-hour interview. And it requires the line manager to work with human resources.
Yemi noted that talent-sourcing companies do not always get it right. In such cases, the startup must be ready to mould recruiters into the taste of the organisations they find themselves.
- “In this case, we put them on six-month probation and the individual is not working out in one or two months. The first thing shouldn’t be about exiting them, it should be about what we can do to develop them because they are individuals who are diamonds in the rocks and they just need a hand holding, somebody to polish them and bring out the best in them.”
The skill will matrix: Referencing the skill will matrix, he explained that some individuals have a high will and low skill while some have low skill and high will. How organizations manage such talents will depend on their ability to understand individual talents and help move them from the first quadrant to another where they’re able to ultimately deliver for their respective organization.
- “Today’s job environment has changed the expected leadership competencies to be able to manage talent because if you don’t manage them, they’ve got options,” he said.
Talent sourcing competition: He added that talent sourcing competition has become the norm because employees have more opportunities to even work for foreign companies.
- “The opportunities are boundless because of the advent of technology and the things that talents can do to make money and if employees still don’t find it, they will move out. People think that it’s all about the economic situation or political insecurity around the country. I acknowledge all of that, but I promise you that also corporate Nigeria has a lot of things to do in terms of helping us keep talent. If we have the right sort of leadership in the right positions within the corporate space, maybe 10 to 20 per cent of those who are migrating might just stay in Nigeria.”
Importance of soft skills: He spoke on the importance of soft skills such as emotional intelligence, stress management, time management, etc. According to him, though these skills were not prioritised in the past, organisations are giving them more focus nowadays, especially when recruiting for management roles. Possessing such skills helps managers and team lead to lead better without toxicity.
- “Those are soft skills that were that deemphasized in the past. In the new world, they have become very important because it is not just the fact that you want to be able to deliver results, but we are all trying to reduce toxicity in workplaces today. We’re all trying to improve psychological safety around corporate Nigeria. And if people do not have what you call soft skills (I call it hard skills), then organisations will constantly be in a state of flux and reflux,” he said.
Need for good work culture: Yemi explained that in the last two to three years since the advent of the pandemic, people have realized that there is more to life than just the 8 to 5 work shift, getting a paycheck and going on. He said people have realized the need to have balance integration harmony in their lives. And the only way to achieve this is through great work culture, otherwise, employees will constantly be looking for an environment where they can thrive, not just survive.
- “The younger generation especially is not looking for just paychecks, they’re looking for psychological safety. They’re looking for meaning more than just money. They’re looking for sanity more than just salary. They’re looking for a purpose more than just promotion, and if they don’t get all of that, we say that they are shifting, We say that they are impatient, but the point is, let’s keep the environment psychologically safe for them from a great culture perspective, and perhaps we will see them stay more and contribute more to the organization.
- “When individuals who are not getting the right sort of leadership and great culture. When they’re tired of the environment and they don’t have a choice, they will quite quit.”
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Last week, Nigeria’s monetary authorities intensified efforts at solving Nigeria’s many fiscal and macroeconomic problem
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The real estate company is helping to provide affordable housing solutions to Nigerians
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Odusami said solar energy could soon phase out generator usage in a few years
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One of the major Nigerian markets still underutilized is gemstone and jewelry
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Allawee, a corporate card company based in Nigeria, is one of such that lets businesses handle their spending in a very streamlined process and manner
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The platform is helping to connect patients with their drug providers, including pharmacists, doctors, diagnostics partners, or anyone else that ensures patients get the best help.
The post How Famasi Africa is bringing healthcare solution to patients’ doorstep – CEO, Adeola Ayoola appeared first on Nairametrics.
When it comes to doing business in Nigeria, young people face challenges such as access to resources, lack of knowledge, amongst others. Sahara Group has recognized this and it is helping to empower young Africans to lead lives of impact and profit social entrepreneurship through its corporate social responsibility vehicle, Sahara Foundation. Recommeded Reading […]
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Zenolynk is an innovative mobility service provider that is looking to make the journey experience around mass mobility and public transportation a lot more attractive.
The post How Zenolynk is providing solution to traffic congestion in Lagos – Founder, Tumi Adeyemi appeared first on Nairametrics.
In 2020, Covid-19 rendered many people jobless, however, the pandemic also became the basis for establishing lots of businesses for innovators who could turn around the table. Jennifer Jemedafe is one of such people who took the bull by the horn when she founded Retention Concierge, a customer consulting and technology company after she lost […]
The post How Retention Concierge is helping companies serve their customers better – Founder, Jennifer Jemedafe appeared first on Nairametrics.
In the past, people would waste a considerable amount of time opening an account, lodging complaints, making withdrawals and all sorts of activities that take place in the bank. However, digitization has made it possible for everyone to perform bank transactions within the flick of a switch right in their comfort zones. For VFD microfinance, […]
The post How VFD Microfinance Bank is making banking easy – MD, Gbenga Omolokun appeared first on Nairametrics.
Tudu Energy says it is determined to assemble bigger products which can be sourced locally to ensure quality control to give Nigerians quality products.
The post How Tudu Energy is building solar home systems to power SMEs and households – CEO, Tuoyo Dudu appeared first on Nairametrics.
Globally, businesses and individuals bank on insurance as a protection plan against future occurrences. Meanwhile, in Africa and Nigeria, a lot of people are yet to tap into the potential.
The post Getting people to understand insurance has been the sector’s biggest challenge – Adebowale Banjo, co-founder, Mycover.ai appeared first on Nairametrics.
Dapo-Thomas is using Perth Partners to help Nigerians learn the basic principles of investment so as not to fall victim to get-rich-quick platforms.
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The startup is helping businesses understand the need to go digital rather than focus on cash which is prone to fraud, theft and cannot be easily tracked.
The post Businesses not funded find it difficult to scale through in Nigeria – Yele Oyekola, CEO, Duplo appeared first on Nairametrics.
Habib Olisa, the founder of Episode Multimedia Creation, pivoted from a record label to a football podcast and is making more money.
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On today’s edition of Business Half hour, we speak to Hamiza Raman, the founder of Coco bean bakery, a cake bakery in the Nigerian food and beverage sector.
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The use of data is critical in our everyday life, helping individuals, organizations as well as government to limit bias in making informed decisions.
The post Africa needs much public data infrastructure for data collection – Preston Ideh, co-founder and CEO at Stears appeared first on Nairametrics.
In this episode of Nairametrics Business Half Hour, we speak with Dr. Ndubuisi Ekwueme, the CEO and founder of Dubz 3D,
The post How 3D printing can be useful in the medical field, others – Dr. Ndubuisi Ekwueme appeared first on Nairametrics.
Apart from training, Nupat Technologies is an innovative hub where young minds come together, discuss and brainstorm.
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The company is involved in helping vehicle owners save and earn money through their vehicles, boat rentals and private jet rentals.
The post Autogirl is looking at becoming the Airbnb of car rentals in Africa – Founder, Chinazom Arinze appeared first on Nairametrics.
Today, smart lawyers are fast embracing the use of technology to keep up with the trend and stay relevant in the sector.
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Autochek says it is allowing people to have more access to owning vehicles through a seamless platform.
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Dizbuzz, a Nigerian fintech, is helping Nigerians who may not necessarily have the collateral to access quick loans and meet their financial obligations.
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Revent Technology is at the forefront of helping businesses to develop the technological space that is needed to solve tangible problems...
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Remedial Health is using its B2B model to ease the purchasing processes for pharmacies, drugstores and healthcare providers.
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AGX is a group of businesses that deal with agricultural export of both ready-made products and raw materials from every area of the country...
The post How AGX Group is changing the face of agriculture in Nigeria – Tobi Delly, CEO AGX Global appeared first on Nairametrics.
Payercoin, a fintech startup, is helping businesses in Africa to accept crypto payment on its platform from anywhere in the world,
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Nathan Nwachukwu is the co-founder of Klas, an edtech platform that allows anyone to start an online school and deliver live classes.
The post We project a future where professors will deliver live lectures using our platform – Klas 18-year-old co-founder, Nathan Nwachukwu appeared first on Nairametrics.
Mizala offers simpler, easier and flexible insurance packages and subscriptions that is tailored to cater to the informal and formal sector.
The post How Mizala provides insurance claims in 48 hours – Israel Ifedayo, COO, Mizala appeared first on Nairametrics.
Agroeknor has made itself an integral part of the farming process with the farmers, instead of simply sourcing and forwarding the products.
The post How Agroeknor helps smallholder farmers export superfoods from Nigeria – Co-founder, Timi Oke appeared first on Nairametrics.
It is going to be a whole new narrative as Panoramic adapts Nigerian historical stories into comic books and animations for a global audience.
The post Panaramic is telling Nigeria’s history using comics and animation – Tunji Anjorin appeared first on Nairametrics.
When it comes to investments like securities, treasury bills and bonds, the impression is that one has to have a huge sum of money to invest before looking at any of those options. However, Comercio Partners Ltd is now changing that narrative by making such investments available and accessible even to low-income earners.
Speaking during the Nairametrics Business Half Hour, Co-founder and CEO of Comercio Partners, Nnamdi Nwizu explained how the team is filling in gaps in the investment sector by providing service leadership across a wide spectrum of financial services to Nigerians.
The startup which has become one of the fastest-growing investment firms in Nigeria, commenced operations in 2016, established by three former bankers who wanted to make investment easier and accessible to Nigerians.
“One of those gaps we noticed was in the fixed income market, we saw a gap in the retail sector – that is the bonds, treasury bills and so on, and there was not a lot of involvement in the retail space. Even for those that did get involved, most of them had to go through the whole long process of going to the bank to talk to some people and seek advice over it. The retail investors were not getting the best of financial services in that regard. What we do now is to create products in-house that caters to the retail space and retail investors to ensure that they are not cut out of the market,” Nwizu said.
One of Comercio’s products – Tradefi.ng – has been launched and made available for downloads on the Play Store. With this application, users can register in two minutes and start investing in fixed income assets with as little as N10,000. This takes away the stress and troubles of having to go all the way to the bank to fill out forms, while also providing details on each category so that users can make the best choices.
For investors with low-risk appetite, who are on the lookout for risk-free options, the bonds, treasury bills and other fixed-income assets on the platform provides a wide range of choice for them to explore. With proper knowledge of the investment returns and maturity date, the user can make an informed decision. Upon maturity of the asset, the user can also log into the app, and access the funds with ease.
Typically, the standard size for bonds run into millions of naira, but with Comercio breaking it down into little bits, virtually anyone can invest. While many people may be interested in investing, factors like the high poverty level, low savings and loss of income to inflation, reduce the number of people who are actually able to invest in things foreign currency-based investments, cryptocurrency or even fixed-income assets. Because of this, a service that breaks down huge investment requirements into little bits, generally means that investments can now be accessed by more people.
Comercio focuses on trading fixed income securities and equities for investors and providing financial advisory and asset management services. In terms of financial advisory and portfolio management, Nwizu noted that before Comercio, retail investors were not getting the needed advice on the best-suited product for them, or how to structure their transactions.
“We saw that the clients needed more and we thought we could come in and increase offerings to clients – advice clients on complicated products like derivatives and the likes,” he stated.
Comercio also offers an interdealer brokerage service that is focused on intermediating the OTC market for fixed income assets like bonds, and treasury bills for banks and corporate bodies. This can help the partners in a transaction stay anonymous and get the best rates for their deals. The license for this service is restricted to corporate enterprises and does not cover retail investors.
Beyond helping Nigerians invest, Comercio has also partnered with a payday loan firm that gives out loans to retail clients and helps them access funds for emergency needs. This is one of the suites of financial products that the company is making available to retail investors.
Comercio Partners is not stopping at fixed-income investment options and access to finance. Recently, the startup has ventured into real estate with new products that give access to clients who want to get their first real estate property.
As its services cut across different sectors, Comercio Partners has its activities supervised and regulated by the Security and Exchange Commission, as well as the Financial Markets Dealer Quotation (FMDQ).
From a business that was bootstrapped with borrowed funds in 2016, Comercio Partners has stabilised its operations within six years and is now looking to further expand the suite of products it provides to make investing easy for its customers, and broker transactions for corporate bodies.
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As more businesses emerge in the competitive spaces, brands will need data from audience measurement to better target their markets, says Lanre Ashaolu, CEO of Four Pulley Ltd (FPL Media).
Ashaolu noted that marketing campaigns have always been based on data, but the landscape is changing very fast and so is the data. Speaking on the Nairametrics Business Half Hour, Ashaolu, who has almost two decades of experience in the sector, noted that people move around and so the demographics of audience reach continues to change.
However, the paucity of funds is not allowing for much investment into Audience Research. Advertising is backed up by data, and such research would enables advertisers to know how best to tailor their products and solutions. The secondary data available from some public institutions are no longer sufficient. The trend is shifting, and the audience demographics are changing too. Brands want to better tailor and target their messages in line with them.
“I have a background in research, and there is so much one would want to explore in the aspect of research and development. But there is need for serious funding to drive such research initiatives at the level that they should be handled. The government has done some part in this regard, but we need more private players to devote the necessary funds to audience measurement and management solutions because it will unlock a lot of deal dollars that people are not spending on.
“We know that qualitatively, Lagos is the most populous city in West Africa, but when we come down to audience dynamics like how many people pass a particular route on a daily basis, and how many people get to see these billboards, and so on, we need more so that we witness exponential growth beyond what we are seeing now. Nigeria has the capacity to be a market leader in advertising, but we need this data to get us there. Such data guides your spending decision and helps you balance your spending and direction,” he explained.
FPL Media, a marketing communication company based in Lagos state, has been offering brand management, media consultation, advertising and corporate branding solutions to various businesses since 2014. The company started out with shareholders’ fund and private equity, developing solutions and helping brands achieve their marketing targets.
Ashaolu also pointed out that infrastructural development on the part of the government continues to open up more locations, making it easier for players in the advertising industry to take their brand marketing campaigns to more areas and reach more people with their outdoor channels.
How the pandemic affected advertising With the Coronavirus pandemic and the resulting lockdown, there was a decline in outdoor advertising as many brands were simply focused on keeping afloat and surviving. But as the pandemic recedes now, brands are trying to get their voices and messages out to the audience. There are also ‘pandemic-born’ businesses now also competing for the same market.
Explaining the current scenario, Ashaolu said, “now that the pandemic has subsided to some extent, brands are thirsty and eager to get their voice out to the market space, and make up for lost ground. There are also newer players that are competing for market share. There are so many new players now covering that gap, finance, hospitality, telcos and even the medical space that used to be quite conservative, are out there too. Everybody is out there now to get their market share”
Popularly known as FPL media within the industry, Four Pulley has focused on outdoor advertising since it started operations but is recently looking to venture into new digital platforms and help its clients reach the digital audience as well.
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The era of merchants travelling across different states just to resell their products may now be over, as there is now a technology solution that connects businesses to resellers in different locations. CICOD Merchant is a recently launched merchant solution that tries to build an SME network by connecting merchants to resellers.
The founder and CEO of Crown Interactive, Wumi Oghoetuoma, was a guest on the Nairametrics Business Half Hour show where he stated that this most recently launched product was targeted at building an SME Network that manufacturers and other players in the supply chain can tap into.
“We believe strongly that the manufacturing sector is the future of Nigeria, and building a strong SME network is just one step towards transforming that value chain. Not everyone has to come to Lagos or go to Abuja to resell his products. What happens if you stay where you are, represent your local community, put your products on CICOD Merchant and have somebody as a reseller for you in Lagos or in Kaduna or in Abuja?” he asked.
He noted that Crown Interactive is a software company, with a clear roadmap, and specific systems detailing the kind of problems they want to solve and the life cycle of the suite of products that will provide business solutions for the organisations.
“Just the way Oracle has a suite of products, so do we, our vision is very clear about our roadmap and what our systems should be doing. Being a software development company puts a bit of distraction on us, it’s quicker money but slower to the vision that we want to execute. We are a software company not a software development company,” Oghoetuoma explained.
How it started More than a decade ago, Oghoetuoma was pursuing a career as a consultant in business process reengineering and business analysis, and working with several international companies. Up until he decided that the transformation of business processes could be brought home to Nigeria.
“All of the work we were doing at the time was quite interesting because we were involved in many systems and processes, and I thought to myself that we could do this in Nigeria. If these large companies are undergoing transformation and having to put all the systems together to build their processes for the next level, surely this can be done in Nigeria. I thought to myself, if we do the same thing in Nigeria, it could help the country and her industry,” he said.
The business first started off in the United Kingdom, trying to build solutions and provide services for customers in Nigeria. However, it became clear with time that if they were going to provide solutions for businesses and merchants operating in Nigeria and in Africa, the best place to be situated was in Nigeria. It was on this premise that the company moved down to Nigeria.
He said, “We were doing quite a bit in the UK, but I was trying to future-proof the company as well as Nigeria. On July 16, 2012, I decided that if this was going to work, I had to move my whole family back. We were building solutions for Nigeria by Nigerians, with Nigerians and it made sense that we should be in Nigeria so we packed up and bags and came down. We have been fortunate to have the right board supporting us.”
The team went through all the highs and lows, losing money, starting all over, raising funds before finally breaking out of the cycle when they secured a major client in Nigeria’s power sector. The biggest challenge, according to him, was getting people to believe in their capacity and agree to buy local. It took the first major break to make a difference.
“Our first major client took a gamble on us, although they managed their risk. We’re very grateful to them because if they didn’t believe in us, if they didn’t decide to go local and buy local, maybe we would have still been struggling now. It is usually the first big break that is very difficult, but they saw that we were not after the money but after impact,” he recounted.
Crown Interactive now has a suite of several products and solutions for businesses and merchants in Nigeria, and recently back to the United Kingdom. One of such products is the Workflow Manager (WFM) – a flexible and fully integrated platform to the Business and Operation Support system – for Service Fulfilment and Problem Handling. This product automates back-office processes especially for approval-based business processes, across departments and systems from complaint handling, task management to inventory request management. With this, businesses can track issues from initiation to resolution.
There is also the CICOD Customer Order Management (COM), an Application that manages orders for merchants across sectors like Manufacturing, Retail, Wholesale, Construction, Oil & Gas, and Public Sectors. This product has features like Sales Order Process, Order Management, Invoicing, Payment Validation, Order Delivery, Payment Confirmation among others, thus enabling businesses to manage the lifecycle of their goods from order, purchasing, processing, fulfillment, logistics to delivery.
CICOD also has a Customer Management & Billing platform that eases the customer management processes for all categories of customers. This product is built with features like the Features Customer Order Management / Provisioning, Customer Account Management, Product Management, Automated Estimated Billing Methodology, Non-energy Billing (Flexible solution to manage billing in many sectors) etc. This provides a cost-effective way to manage business processes, effectively manage customers and stay flexible.
The CICOD Energy Management Control Center is a product designed to help users keep track of their consumption of provided services such as Electricity, Water or Gas, ensuring reduced outages and zero leakages.
The tool enables more efficient management and optimization of demand and distribution with Load Sharing, Demand Management, Revenue Assurance, Monitoring and Analysis. It also has the ability for energy usage forecast, Bulk Purchase & Distribution Management, Asset Provisioning, Power Management, Consumption Management.
CICOD works with a freemium model, allowing users to start with a free trial of the products and upgrade to the premium version afterwards. In this way, merchants and business owners can first begin to try out the features on their business and see how it improves their processes and returns, before deciding what package to upgrade to. The products are Fully Integrated Modules with the Option to Choose and Deploy to private cloud, or use as SaaS.
The CEO noted that the company has been providing solutions for merchants in the power sector, before venturing into the manufacturing and supply chain sector in recent years because of the projection its solution is expected to have in the sector.
On the payment end, CICOD plays the role of an aggregator with a single plugin – the unified collections gateway – that integrates majority of the payment providers and gives businesses a single plugin for different kinds of payments.
Crown Interactive plans to be the dominant software company to come out of Africa in the next decade, “providing the best and most innovative software for and from Africa”; and its founder says this is because they are becoming “too relevant to be ignored”.
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“The future is crypto” is an expression that is gradually becoming popular online. Slow as Nigeria may have seemed to be in joining with the Blockchain revolution and cryptocurrency movement around the world, she is now catching up. At the forefront of this movement are the Millenials and Gen Z who appear more attuned to the space and willing to explore every investment and earning opportunity that it presents.
AFEN blockchain is a Nigerian startup that is facilitating this move in Africa by building solutions and creating opportunities to leverage blockchain technologies in the arts, education and real estate sector. Beyond this, AFEN is also driving for enlightenment and education, to show Nigerians that there are more ways to make money from blockchain technology other than just buying and selling cryptocurrencies.
Deborah Ojengbede, CEO of AFEN Blockchain, spoke more about this on the Nairametrics Business Half Hour show where she was a guest.
According to Ojengbede, the NFT space is a core part of this technology, and AFEN launched the NFT marketplace in 2021 to allow people buy, sell and trade NFTs on the blockchain. Even though it is very new, it is presenting opportunities for ordinary people to make money from NFTs.
“One of the most recurring challenge we have had is people not really knowing what we do, or what the blockchain is set to achieve. A lot of people reach out to us to tell us that they are interested in the Blockchain technology, or in cryptocurrency and NFTs but they do not really know what to do, or how they can make money from it. There is this knowledge gap with blockchain technology and that is what we are trying to break.This is why we came up with the Learn-to-earn initiative so that people can learn more about the space and make money from it,” Ojengbede explained.
The first phase of the learning initiative launched in January will educate people while exposing them to other opportunities as well. According to Ojengbede, there will be bite-sized courses and articles that explain details about blockchain in simple lay terms. For others looking to pursue a professional course and a career in the blockchain space, there are advanced courses available to them for free.
“For the first phase, we have short articles, and video tutorials that explain blockchain technology and different opportunities on the space. This covers the basic things. The second phase focuses on people looking to build a career in the blockchain industry, and also people in web 2 looking to get into web 3, this to give them a soft landing in the space. We are collaborating with our partners to create professional courses in different related areas.
“When you take those courses and you come out successful, your certificate will come in the form of an NFT and those certificate NFTs grant you access to internships and job opportunities with our partners,” Ojengbede explained.
AFEN to launch Metacity and tokenise real estate for Nigerians
AFEN Blockchain also has plans to launch the Metacitti in Nigeria before the end of 2022. The Metacity is a project which will allow Nigerians own bits and portions of real estate properties in the country, even if they do not have large sums.
“You can own a portion of land, or real estate asset with $100 instead of waiting to have $10,000. NFTs are digital assets that represent real-life assets on the blockchain and through NFTs, we will tokenise the value of real estate assets in such a way that you can own a fraction of that asset on the blockchain and also get returns and whatever perks that come with it based on the value of the NFT,” she said.
With investment analysts predicting that investment habits will move more in the direction of digital assets, and foreign currencies, this initiative from AFEN will help define the path of Nigerians into the blockchain space. An innovation that will help people own little bits and portion of real-time assets around them, will likely gain a lot of acceptance among the younger generation.
After raising funds through series of private sales and an initial public offering of the token in april 2021, AFEN started out with its first product, the NFT marketplace. Despite the concerns about regulation of the cryptocurrency space in Nigeria, there is a rising interest in the NFT space especially among sectors like fashion, arts, education, and even real estate. The NFT is an asset that can be used to secure provenance of various artworks on the blockchain, so even artistes may be embracing it more. As this is ongoing, AFEN is creating platforms for more discussions around the issues.
“While we are optimising our platforms, we also started a series of twitter spaces where we bring NFT creators who are doing things in the space, to showcase their work, and educate upcoming creators coming into the space, so that they can learn from their success and their mistakes. This keeps the conversation ongoing,” she said.
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Have you ever imagined an e-commerce platform that would make it possible for local manufacturers and producers to sit at the comfort of their homes and sell their products to merchants and individuals across the world, without having to go through the hassles associated with importation? If you ever did, it is time to put a name to that imagination, and the name is Ebeosi.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ebeosi, Chibueze Izugbo, explained on the Nairametrics Business Half Hour that Ebeosi is opening up e-commerce and trade beyond borders for Nigerian manufacturers to connect to more than 25% of the international marker.
Ebeosi is an Igbo word that can loosely be translated into “the source” or “the origin”, and the name was inspired by a dream to make it easy for people to buy products manufactured in specific locations. It started in 2019 as a typical online marketplace, but chose to toe a unique path by first onboarding manufacturers, producers, and importers across several countries.
“While it had always been my dream that Ebeosi should help small business owners to be able to sell their products to customers anywhere around the world, I realised that we could not start that way. As a way to place a quality check on all products listed on Ebeosi, we had to start with the manufacturers, importers and the big brands that could guarantee the authenticity of the products they were listing. We did not want to have issues of people receiving products of less quality than what they ordered,” Izugbo explained.
Sometime after commencing operations in 2020, Ebeosi progressed and started listing small business owners who were ready to abide by the same policies and regulations on quality. In about two years of operation, Ebeosi has earned its spot as the third largest e-commerce platform in Nigeria, and is heading on to become that one platform that will connect Nigerian products to the international marketplace.
Ebeosi launched in the United States of America and Canada, and has concluded plans to launch in two African countries – Senegal and Ghana – in 2022. This will allow Nigerian manufacturers and merchants sell their raw materials and products to customers in those countries, and also directly source products from manufacturers and countries of their choice.
“This is to enable Nigerians and Africans sell directly to the consumers and businesses USA/Canada. It is time we talk about earning in dollars right here in Nigeria, rather than looking for dollars to import. The launch in Ghana and Senegal is for wholesale transactions only, so our users in Nigeria can sell their products and raw materials to businesses in those countries, and also buy from them as well. We are positioned to drive the intra-African trade starting with wholesale between Nigeria and those two countries,” Izugbo stated.
What this means is that a customer can visit Ebeosi, type the product he wants and then choose the country of origin he wants to source the particular product from. Buying shoes made in Italy, or Electronics made in Japan, or gadgets made in China, for instance, thus becomes easier with these filter options.
Izugbo recounted that the funds to start Ebeosi came from his savings from earlier businesses, partnerships with key players in the sector, a couple of loans and exploring his network within the industry.
Another competitive advantage also comes from the logistics end of the business. According to Izugbo, the company offers some of the cheapest logistics services. “One can order a computer or a gadget and pay a delivery fee of N480 or thereabout within Lagos, and about N1,300 across other states in the country. This is about the cheapest you can get, and we are also working on plans for same –day delivery, and this is going to add another feather to our cap and more benefits to our customers,” Izugbo stated.
There is the dropshipping option where a vendor in Nigeria can purchase or pay for a product, and have it delivered straight to his customer’s location in Nigeria, USA or Canada. This will help Nigerians make money even without huge startup capital.
Ebeosi also provides an affiliate marketing plan where users can share products listed on the site using their unique links, and get paid when purchase is made with the link. It sure seems like the birth of a whole new e-commerce era for small business owners and individuals, with so many earning options to explore.
The Buy Now Pay Later option with zero-interest for salary earners Understanding the revolution of credit in Africa, and the role credits will play in online purchases in the near future, Ebeosi entered a partnership with Carbon to offer customers a Buy-Now-Pay-Later option.
With this option, customers who are salary earners in the civil service or structured private sector, can make bulky purchases (based on their eligibility) and spread the payment over a span of six months with zero interest.
“What this means is that you do not need to start saving for almost a year to buy gadgets for your home, for instance. If you are a salary earner, you can buy the gadgets you need to make your home comfortable, and then spread the payment over the next six months so that you pay with ease and without having to break the bank,” Izugbo explained.
The fintech partner in the arrangement – Carbon – does the checks to determine the customer’s creditworthiness, income range and the amount he is eligible to access under the Buy now pay later option. Once this is decided, the customer can make purchase not more than his permitted range and the payment is structured.
“Nigerians are not bad people. I think the reason why people default in some times is that they borrow money to get a product, only to see that the quality is substandard or less than they wanted. In some other case, some platforms allow the individual to take loans or purchases that is even more than his annual salary. How can that individual repay with convenience in such a case? In our case, we have had minimal to zero defaults because the issue of quality has been taken care of, and the credit amount is also within a convenient range,” he explained.
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If you care to look around, you will find that there are lots of statistics about women in Africa and finances. A recent study from 2020 stated that about 35 million women in Africa are not signed up for any financial service such as a bank or mobile money account. Another noted that on average, women in Africa own fewer assets than their male counterparts.
Still, a more recent statistic from 2021 says that many female-owned businesses may not actualise their potentials because of an estimated $42 billion financing gap for women in Africa, even though more women than men become entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa.
It has been said over and over that any obstacle that prevents the woman from fully exploring her financial capability could be depriving the continent of women’s contributions to the economy. When you look beyond routine banking services like saving and withdrawals, you note again that while a lot of women are exploring earning opportunities, not many are going beyond routine banking services to access other banking services. A good way to change this is increasing women’s financial literacy, and this is one of the solutions that Hervest is trying to resolve.
As a guest on the Nairametrics Business Half Hour, CEO of Hervest, Solape Akinpelu, explained how Hervest was founded to give women greater access to use of financial services like savings, impact investments and credits.
“Right from when I started marketing, I had noticed a very low adoption of women in finance (statistically) there is a persistent 25% of financial services among women. More women adopt banking and that is where it stops, but mostly, they are not looking at other services like investments and the rest. I just thought we could change that status quo.
“Gender finance is not just for women. we have most of our women being underwhelmed financially, with low access to credit, low financial literacy, not creating enough wealth and it affects all of us economically,” Akinpelu noted.
After what could be rightly described as a rich career in the financial sector, Solape decided that it was time to change what was considered a norm and get women to become more financially included.
From bootstrapping, the Hervest team found a few angel investors and this got them started. All the financial services available on Hervest is targeted at women generally, but the team decided that a good use of the finance in impact investments would be to target smallholder female farmers.
According to Akinpelu, the choice of targeting females in agriculture was two-fold, for the females in that sector, and for the economy.
“Economically, agriculture contributes about a quarter to our GDP, and the world is having a global food shortage, so it wouldn’t be out of place if we all decide to become farmers ourselves. Also, the agricultural rural population in Nigeria is made up of 75% women but the structured farming that goes into that system is about 10%. Most of them are not maximising the efforts they put into farming, neither are they getting good returns on their input. By offering them blended financing, we are solving double problems,” Akinpelu explained.
Hervest offers the smallholder female farmers blended financing which includes training, resources and finances. There is financial literacy trainings (often language-based), and then they are connected to financing, and later to the market so that they can make good returns on their efforts. The blend of the trainings, funds and market makes for better impact on the female rural farmers, than simply giving funds without any training.
The Hervest team is looking at extending this to 10,000 female farmers in the year 2022, and going as far as Niger, Benue, Oyo and Ogun states. It is expected that this should provide some sort of equaliser, as the male counterparts have better access to financing.
The Hervest team tried to extend gender equality into the recruitment but was constrained by the realisation that there were very few females in tech.
“We are talking financial inclusion for women but in reality, we have more women in fragile roles that they are the first considered for layoffs and the likes. There is a gender gap in core areas like tech and we realised this when we started recruiting and so we decided to do something about it. We can’t be talking to a bunch of broke women. We have to ensure that women also adopt technology and those areas that will give them a financial edge and have sought-after income sources. This saw me take the role of country director, women in tech, to cover and close the gender gap.”
How it works It all starts with downloading the Hervest app from the playstores and signing up. After this, one can choose a saving plan and begin to save. The Hervest team works with these farmers in collectives, conducts due diligence, vets their projects, batch them together and raise their farms on the platform. Other women saving on the app can now invest in the farms in short 5 to 6 months cycles. Users who do not wish to invest in anything can stick to automated, periodic and targeted savings.
There are also resources available on the app to teach women about financial literacy and empower them with other tools. It can be summarised as women saving funds to finance female farmers, so that they can all get good returns on their funds and efforts. Hervest is an enabler, empowering women with better ways to earn, save and invest. The Hervest (digital savings and investment) app has been downloaded and is being used by thousands of clients across Nigeria.
Akinpelu notes that there is nothing restricting males from using the app and its offerings. “We are women-focused, but we have men who are interested in what we do, and how these funds are being used to lift other women and with good returns too. You will just find that most of the content we have on the app addresses you as a female.”
Working with CBN-licensed platforms makes the savings and investment process seamless. Having grown to this point of serving close to 10,000 clients, Hervest is now seeking institutional funding to accelerate towards more growth and impact. The goal is to get up to 300,000 users in Nigeria onboard by the close of 2022. There are also plans to launch in Kenya, Zimbabwe and other African markets with similar challenges.
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In many regions of the world, blockchain technology is becoming increasingly popular. The benefits of blockchain technology have resonated throughout numerous industries, from enhancing healthcare to facilitating cross-border payments.
Today, many tech companies in Africa are utilizing modern technology to provide solutions to some of the continents’ most pressing issues. The majority of Africa’s initial wave of blockchain startups focused on remittance which happens directly on their platforms.
But what if you want to easily integrate a crypto wallet system to accept and process crypto-payments into your products, for instance, you might have to build the wallet system from scratch which can be quite tedious. Some companies like Bitpowr have been working on ways to make this easier. In an interview with Nairametrics, Oyetoke Tobi, CEO of Bitpowr explained how the startup is providing an all in one blockchain wallet and digital assets solutions for businesses.
What Bitpowr does Bitpowr is a blockchain payment solution and wallet infrastructure that has built the tools to power online payments for online business owners, enterprises, developers, and individuals thereby providing the building blocks for businesses and individuals globally to take advantage of blockchain to access the global digital economy.
According to Tobi, the idea for Bitpowr came as a challenge “I wanted to create a simple blockchain wallet to integrate with some products, I realized that most times I would have to build the wallets from scratch for every project so that is when the idea came.”
“I was trying to make people integrate crypto payments on their website so I created a simple crypto wallet that helps you create and manage Bitcoin wallets and also accept crypto payment. It came out well and made work easier for me so I decided to turn it into a service to help people,” Tobi added.
Bitpowr provides the infrastructure for you to build all the services you need, for example, exchanges, crypto wallets, payments. “We want to provide all the tools you need to build your crypto service. One of the issues with building on the blockchain is that it is complex and time-consuming but we are providing the infrastructure for people to build on the blockchain”.
Bitpowr is built for all businesses including fintech and commerce. The startup makes it easy for fintech companies who want to build exchanges on BitPowr and also retail platforms that want to incorporate crypto payment can utilize their services.
Bitpowr offers Wallet API – a complete suite wallet management solution that lets you create and manage different types of wallets for different blockchain and different use cases. Payments API – that lets you accept crypto payments with little to no setup. You don’t have to worry about implementing the wallet API and managing it and Payouts API – a settlement service that lets you convert your crypto to fiat.
In terms of data privacy and web security, Bitpowr utilizes a wide range of cryptosystem layers of Multi-Party Computation, Threshold Cryptography, and Nacl Box Public Key Cryptography to deliver enterprise-grade keyless wallet vault enabling businesses to benefit from the high level of security, resilience and availability.
Tobi said, “We have added security to reduce data theft. We are also talking to Coincover, a crypto-insurance company to go through all our security protocols to ensure that we are taking the right steps to secure our user data.”
Coincover protects against theft and loss of access to crypto so you can enjoy the rewards without the hassle of worry. Every wallet in Bitpowr is insured by them.
Blockchain in Africa is slowly maturing so like every new venture, there are challenges, Tobi noted that the challenge he faced when he launched was the issue of crypto education. “We surveyed to find people that are interested in using crypto to purchase goods outside the country and we found that many people were not interested because of the notion that crypto is a scam.”
“From the feedbacks gotten from the survey, we planned to partner with people that are already in the crypto communities that are training blockchain engineers. We have fewer engineers in Nigeria,” he said.
Since its launch, the startup has had over 12 employees and plans to launch bitpowr academy in February this year to educate users about cryptocurrency.
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Making bulk purchases and payments are always a pain in the neck, especially when you are an employee or self-employed and have to wait till the end of the month to get paid. Imagine having to pay for your annual house rent in January just after the Detty December celebrations, not easy at all. However, some players in the financial sector are working hard to make sure that no one gets to pay in bulk anymore.
Founder and CEO of Creditclan, Femi Bejide stated on the Nairametrics Business Half Hour that Creditclan wants to ensure that no one needs to make bulk payment for anything again, whether in education, rent, health or others.
“The plan is to help everyone to afford with ease, the things that they would have had to pay in bulk. So you can pay your rent in instalments, same with school fees, and any other bulk purchase can be conveniently spread across a number of months,” Bejide said.
With this, people can structure their living standards within their income streams with convenience. It is a fact that no one gets his annual income all at once or in bulk, and this is one reason why paying rents, fees and other purchases in bulk puts a strain on income.
The Buy-Now-Pay-Later is a new scheme that Creditclan recently ventured into after about three years of providing credit infrastructure, technology and data to fintechs and banks. As a credit infrastructure platform, Creditclan has been focused on helping to provide credit facilities to clients so that they can better offer credit to their customers.
The idea for Creditclan was first born in 2009 when Bejide was managing a small lending house in Lagos State and realised that credit in Nigeria was operating within several constraints.
“It was then I realised the massive infrastructure deficit that credit companies have in terms of data, operations, technology etc. Nigeria and Africa need to solve the credit and growth problems in the continent, and these constraints will continue to pose a challenge. That was what we came to solve in 2018 with Creditclan.
“We are not a credit company per se. We are the technology that drives credit. Some credit companies use our infrastructure and technology to drive their credit. So, we are a credit infrastructure company, not a credit company ourselves,” Bejide explained.
The new Buy-Now-Pay-Later scheme is building a last mile for credit, taking it to the point of transaction for schools, parents, rents, merchants, buyers, and others whom the credit companies would ordinarily not have considered for credit facilities.
There are individuals who are being denied credit by the credit companies and banks due to absence of data to determine their creditworthiness. This includes the self-employed who have no salary structure, the unbanked and under-banked who also have limited financial data against which they can be assessed. By filling the data and infrastructure problem, Creditclan is helping the credit companies make better credit decisions and offer credit, not just to salary earners but to other creditworthy Nigerians.
“The biggest challenge is establishing who should get the credit. Once we establish that, the banks and the fintechs can do the credit part. Nigeria does not have such strong credit score rating. We came into a space that lacked data and technology, we doubled down and fixed that. So, we are able to use all that to get the right people to give credit. Your cashflow, identity and credit history analysis, your social traction, alternative channels like social and psychometric tests, etc all gives us patterns to tell us within minutes how credit worthy you are, and determine if you have so much at stake that you would not want to default. The credit companies can now use this to reach disbursement decision,” Bejide stated.
Still, along these lines, Creditclan launched the Buy-Now-Pay-Later scheme a couple quarters ago to take credit to where they are sorely needed. The scheme not only simplifies credit infrastructure but also helps banks, merchants, schools, and other businesses offer the pay later option to consumers across Africa.
This infrastructure has now been introduced into thousands of schools across Nigeria as School-Now-Pay-Later, so that parents are able to pay school fees in instalments – daily, weekly and monthly based on their income plan.
Creditclan saw that with the current economic challenges, millions of parents had their incomes hit by the pandemic and were struggling to pay school fees in bulk. This in turn had the schools struggling with cashflow.
“In a relatives-owned school, I saw parents, just coming out of lockdown, struggle to pay their ward’s fees, especially traders, artisans and self-employed people whose earnings had been decimated by the pandemic,” Bejide said.
Left to continue, this could result in an increase in out-of-school kids. The school-now-pay-later scheme came in response to this, and to help both schools and parents, particularly those where the parents are mostly categorized as underbanked or unbanked.
Creditclan hopes to get up to 150,000 merchants on the buy-now-pay-later scheme by Q2, 2022 so that more sectors like the medical, real estate, and insurance will have businesses offering pay-later options to customers.
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Quite a number of businesses across the health, agriculture and even energy sector deal with products and goods that are temperature sensitive. Simply put, these items cannot just be left to the mercy of atmospheric changes. They require a particular temperature to remain useful till they get to the end-users.
Sadly, power has been a teething problem over the years and remains a challenge for businesses that deal with temperature-sensitive items. It is on this premise that Gricds Integrated services stepped into the business scene to solve this critical problem.
Oghenetega Lortim, CEO and founder of Gricds integrated services was a guest on the Nairametrics Business Half Hour where he talked about the technology behind the business.
“We are basically focused on providing Internet of Things (IOT) solutions that enable last-mile delivery of temperature-sensitive products such as vaccines, foods, and medications. We provide different kinds of technology to ensure that these things can be delivered,” he explained.
The startup first built a smart cold chain box that could help people, especially health personnel, keep temperature-sensitive commodities (like vaccines, blood) at regulated temperatures during storage and transportation. However, Gricds integrated service did not start with a focus on the health sector.
As an investor in agriculture, Lortim lost money due to storage challenges that smallhold farmers have to grapple with; he decided to solve the temperature challenge.
One of the early products was targeted at providing reliable transportation of vaccines to cattle in hinterland. They soon became aware that the health sector needed similar products for transportation of things like blood, insulin, chemotherapy medication, and this was the invitation they needed to usher Gricds into the healthcare sector.
The product which takes care of this challenge is a cold box that is solar-powered and equipped to combat Africa’s power challenge. The cold box can be used for the storage and transportation of vaccines, medication and other items.
It has a battery that can last up to 12 hours without power supply, and in the absence of power, can be connected to a solar panel or small inverter to get charged up. This is one of Gricds flagship products.
The second is a logger which fits into existing infrastructure and is used to detect and report temperature for businesses so that the owners can make the right business decisions based on the peculiarities of their environment.
He said, “The device is embedded with real-time storage temperature and location monitoring technology has a dedicated battery which lasts up to 48 hours. It can fit into existing infrastructure such as a warehouse, a cold truck or cold rooms, to detect what the conditions are and transmit so that you can also take real-time steps to curb losses and improve the storage of your product. This can help the poultry farmers to prevent great losses, and also provides for efficient storage of vaccines, blood and other health or agricultural products.”
Gricds recently provided this service in tracking the delivery of 4.2 million doses of the Moderna vaccines across the 36 states in Nigeria. With services like this, healthcare businesses involved in the distribution of chemotherapy medications, insulin have less to worry about.
Creating products such as these required both a combination of software and hardware from within and outside the country, and capital is of course required. Gricds started with bootstrapping, but not for long.
Because its goals and visions resonated with a lot of people and institutions, the company has been able to attract funding in different forms. There have been grants as well. With this, the team was able to build a viable solution and launch out.
The company also emerged as the best innovator at the 2019 Africa Fintech Foundry (AFF) disrupt 2019 conference, tagged; ‘Digital Gold Rush: Building A Sustainable Tech Economy’, organised by Access bank. With this, they bagged the coveted prize of $10,000 funds to inject into the business.
Gricds has also recently taken a direction towards working with the insurance sector. With lots of small and medium-scale farmers starting to embrace insurance to compensate for the heavy challenges and losses they sometimes incur, which is sometimes as high as 40%. To this end, the insurance companies are now sourcing accurate data and technology for their clients, to help them better underwrite risks. Gricds is working with them to provide the IOT technology and communicate the location, temperature, moisture, formation, ammonia level and so on.
Although the market for this product is really wide, Gricds is focusing on the agricultural, healthcare and now insurance sector, to help business owners who are tired of the losses they incur over-temperature issues. Gricds is also working with extension organisations and putting together affordable micro packages in a rent, outright purchase, or lease-to-buy model that lessens the financial burdens for them.
“We try to build the products to be autonomous so power is not a challenge. Our sensors, for instance, can work independently of power for three years. When it’s done, you pull out the batteries and put a new set of batteries. The cold boxes are entirely autonomous and have a battery pack that powers them. We understand that there is an epileptic power supply in our main market which is Nigeria so, it is easier to adopt our technology so that irrespective of the availability of power or not, businesses can still go on especially in hinterlands,” he said.
With the temperature challenge solved and losses minimised, we can look forward to the entry of more players into the agricultural sector and the reduction of food insecurity.
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How much progress can a health provider make in the society, if it is constantly confronted with the challenge of a broken supply chain, chaotic distribution channels, epileptic delivery of quality medicines, and pharmaceutical supplies? Not much. Well, this is the reality that many healthcare providers in Sub-Saharan Africa have to deal with as they work towards an efficient healthcare delivery system. This is not to mention the counterfeit products that also get infiltrated into the fractured supply chain. You can well guess that their job becomes all the more complicated because of this.
However, Drugstoc is providing a cloud-based platform to get quality medicines at affordable prices, thereby boosting superior quality control systems with International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification on Good Distribution Practice.
Drugstoc – a Nigerian-based e-health pharmaceutical distribution startup – is expanding access to quality medicines for healthcare providers, and rebuilding the supply chain financing in the pharmaceutical industry.
Co-founder and CEO of the Drugstoc, Chibuzo Opara recounted on the Nairametrics Business Half Hour that his first inspiration to start a business like this came when he lost a patient due to the non-availability of a pharmaceutical product needed for an orthopaedic surgery. Disturbed by the incident, he decided that he would want to provide a solution to the problem.
This led him to go pursue a degree in Economics Finance, and it was while at this that he met his co-founder, Adam Yehia who was pursuing a Masters degree in health service innovation at Maastricht University in Holland. They shared ideas about the problems in Nigeria’s healthcare sector, as well as possible solutions.
They returned to Nigeria in 2015 after their degrees and started Integra Health, a hospital management company offering consultancy service and providing healthcare management services to about 20 hospitals at the time. Again, they ran into the problem of sourcing pharmaceutical products, and decided that it was time to do something about it.
“It was a nightmare trying to source for pharmaceuticals and so, we decided it was time to provide a solution. Every business is about the right time and opportunity. Starting a business is crazy and running a business is difficult, but we knew we had to start from somewhere. “Fragile and resource-challenged healthcare systems require a radically transformative set of market-based strategies to expand access to healthcare. The DrugStoc way re-engineers the value chain digitally, improving and expanding access to healthcare at the same time,” Opara explained.
It took a couple of trials and errors before the team got a working and sustainable system, and finally opened the first fulfilment centre in 2017. DrugStoc was incubated under Stanford’s Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies in 2016 and emerged as one of the ten finalists for the Africa Netpreneur Prize Initiative, Jack Ma’s flagship entrepreneur program in Africa.
Drugstoc also won the award for the Technology Enabled Distributor of the year, at the Nigeria Health Excellence Award in 2019 and 2021.
Funding Getting the funds to get the business from the idea stage and off the ground, was a mix of different sources. There was part bootstrapping from both co-founders and a couple of friends, as well as funds from early investors and clients who signed up during the pilot stage. Drugstoc also had some supplier credit which came in handy as they could get access to some products and supplies even without having the complete payment.
In 2019, DrugStoc won a share ($65,000) of the inaugural $1 million Africa Netpreneur Prize Initiative by the Jack Ma Foundation, a pitching competition that rewarded 10 enterprises providing solutions for the continent’s critical issues. Drugstoc also received a grant from Bill and Melinda Gates.
This went on until some venture capital was injected into the business. In 2020, DrugStoc secured $4.4 million in a Series A funding round led by Africa HealthCare Master Fund (AAIC), Chicago-based venture firm Vested World, the German Development Bank (DEG) and high-net-worth individuals with a keen interest in tech-health.
How Drugstoc operates Drugstoc operates a B2B model where they service registered hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and healthcare providers and link them to over 400 manufacturers. To get started, these clients have to register on the web page or on the app downloaded from the Playstore. The registration is completed when the healthcare provider submits the license for verification. Once done, they can login at anytime access and order over 7000 pharmaceutical products, Rare Medication, Speciality Items, Medical Consumables and even Small Medical Devices with ease.
In addition, Drugstoc is also providing Smart Payment Solutions & Inventory Financing for healthcare providers so that they can focus on providing efficient healthcare while having their systems run on automation. This service includes Inventory Automation, Smart Account Reconciliation, Point of Sale (POS) service, Business Growth Manager and a Virtual Wallet.
The startup already has over 3000 healthcare providers in its client base. While Drugstoc is concentrated in satisfying the Nigerian market and expanding into all the states, there are plans in the future to go on to other African countries and provide the same End-to-End Procurement Solution for other healthcare providers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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Healthcare remains a basic need for humans, but sadly in Nigeria, the sector is grappling with lots of challenges which puts Nigerians at disadvantage. From poor facilities, to low funding, and low acceptance of social welfare schemes, many Nigerians still do not access quality healthcare at an affordable rate. Some try to resolve their health challenges by simply walking into a pharmacy or drugstore to request medication, and trust the pharmacist’s prescription regardless of his knowledge of their health history. Sometimes, these dealers have little or no formal education in anything health-related.
Picture this. Miss C bagged a first degree in Sociology, but after two years of fruitless job-hunting, she joined a local drugstore for some sort of apprenticeship. After about nine months, she sets up her own drugstore and is ready to start dishing out free ‘medical advice and prescriptions’. The big question is; “just how much has she learnt in nine months that qualifies her to take on this role?” Nigerian Pharma’s market value is projected to reach about $4 billion by 2026, from $1.6million in 2016, with 55% of this market coming from prescription drugs offered by such dealers.
Thankfully, the world is going digital and to bring quality healthcare within access to every Nigerian, OneHealth is taking its pharmaceutical services online to provide a holistic approach to pharmacare. Founder and CEO of OneHealth, Adeola Alli was a guest on the Nairametrics Business Half Hour hosted on Classic FM where she explained the range of services OneHealth gives.
“OneHealth is an online pharmacy and healthcare platform providing access to quality medicines and healthcare solutions. We are building a trusted digital health infrastructure where the average Nigerian can get access to vetted and verified medicines and healthcare solutions,” Alli said.
OneHealth started off with a B2C model as an online pharmacy where people could order medications from their homes. However, the model is being tweaked to allow people manage conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and asthma; and to be able to request other health-related services. From the dashboard and portals, users can now request for services such as lab tests and consultations.
To convey the mission of OneHealth, one has to be able to access testing, reliable medications with proper information on drug interactions and the likes, and proper monitoring afterwards. As a trained Pharmacist, Alli is working together with the OneHealth team to make all of these available to users. She recalled that the idea for OneHealth came when she relocated with her family to Nigeria and could not find specific medications for her children.
“It started with my inability to get some medications for my kids and then I had to order it and have it shipped to Nigeria. Then I realized that for people who have these conditions long-term, it could be a huge challenge if one could not access his medications when he needed it,” Alli said.
It was along these lines that OneHealth started out as a pharmacy before scaling up and going digital to reach more people. The platform already has about 61,000 users who access the services, plus other educational materials. They are also referred to Medical doctors as the need arises, and they can order the needed medications.
“There is more to it. It is not just an online store where you click and buy, there are consultations. The market is changing and we are still trying to find the perfect product market fit. We are looking at having prescription reminders, detector of drug interaction, wellness information etc,” she explained.
OneHealth offers these services on subscription basis, and with this, medications can be prescribed for users based on pre-existing medical conditions and delivered to their doorstep. The more interesting part if the health analytics dashboard that allows users to monitor their health status and progress, and also engage with health professionals.
Though the business has been bootstrapped for some time, OneHealth has also recently raised a significant amount of pre-seed funds to keep operations running and get off the ground.
The target market includes the average Nigerian that is always on their smartphone searching out some form of health information or the other, or seeking to purchase medications and trying to find out side effects, interactions etc. The system takes their information, prescriptions and check for possible interactions as well. Over time, these processes will become automated to improve access to health care for the public.
OneHealth is also considering partnerships with existing Health Maintenance Organisations, where its services can be packaged into some form of bundles for users, especially those managing some form of chronic diseases. There is also the possibility of partnerships with SMEs to help develop simple ways to integrate healthcare management for their employees.
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Imagine standing at the bus stop for over an hour on a Monday morning, waiting for a bus to take you to work. Or even running after buses for a chance to get on, only to end up getting your shirt stained, even when the day is yet to get started. This is a regular experience for residents of busy commercial cities like Lagos. This is also the reason for Shuttlers – a “tech-enabled scheduled bus sharing” company
After travelling and experiencing systems of transportation in different locations, Damilola Olokesusi decided that the working class Nigerian deserved a smoother transport system, and founded Shuttlers. Speaking during the Nairametrics Business Half Hour, she explained that they started with a survey among workers and organisations.
“What we found out was that transportation was a challenge, and both individuals and organisations were trying to address the challenge differently. Some companies go as far as running staff buses at extra costs, just to ease the challenge for their staffs. It was based on those finding that we started in November 2015 with the first pilot,” she said.
With 6 individuals and one Small business that was willing to pay for the service, the team leased a couple of vehicles and started operations. They sold tickets for the seats and adapted a house to house pick-up system, but a few months of using this model, and it became clear that it was not profitable and they could not go far with it.
By January 2016, they applied for several accelerator programs and got into a couple of them. Olokesusi recounted that in the course of these programmes, she learnt more about business models, how to pitch. She also got some seed funding and grants for the business, plus some publicity and an angel investor that injected two buses to test out the routes.
With the new drive, Shuttlers resumed operations again, this time adopting a bus stop to bus stop service, with scheduled pickup times and defined routes. They also targeted more organisations as the pilot had shown them that sustaining the business on a strictly B2C model would be difficult.
“We got to the organisations and were able to get people living along same routes to subscribe for our service. Some companies were spending so much, sometimes hiring multiple buses to cater for staffs staying across different routes. But with what we were offering them, they could simply buy seats along those routes for the staffs instead of leasing and maintaining different vehicles. That reduced costs for them and makes funds available to us for a seamless operation. They can also subsidize or discount for their staffs so that the entire burden is not on them,” she said.
The B2B2C plan from Shuttlers include; a plan where companies split payment of transport fares with their employees whichever way they see fit; another plan where companies pay the complete fares of their employees and B2C, where individual customers pay fares themselves. There is a fully functional app where all the bookings can be made.
With the ridesharing platform, users simply have to download the app from the playstore, signup and fund the wallet. Next step is to book a ride from your closest bus stop to your destination, track the bus and hop on as soon as it gets to your pickup point. The simple steps save workers from having to hustle or run after buses in the morning and is also reliable and affordable compared to public buses where the fares go up relative to demand and rush hours.
Now, Shuttlers operates with an e-hailing license that covers its operations and has an onboarding process for vehicles and drivers. Besides the tests and onboarding procedures, there are routine daily checks on the buses, and quarterly maintenance schedules to see to the continued maintenance of the vehicles.
Shuttlers has over 100 unbranded and branded buses registered on its system and ploughs over 30 routes in Lagos with over 300 bus stops and sells more than 6,000 bus tickets daily (over 3,000 two-way trips).
Dealing with COVID-19 pandemic For a startup based in the transport sector, the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting restriction on movements was going to take a major hit on operations. But about a month into the lockdown, Shuttlers realised that essential service providers still had to go to work and were in need of a reliable means of transportation. The scares of infection meant there was a reluctance to take public buses, especially since there was little or no adherence to the protocols.
Shuttlers thus stepped in to service the essential service providers, while strictly enforcing compliance to the COVID-19 protocols. They only reopened the service to other individuals and organisations after the movement restrictions were lifted and the government released clear guidelines for public transportation. Interestingly, they still experienced a surge when people started returning to the office as most people were still not keen on using the public buses.
One key challenge Shuttlers had to deal with in its five years of operation is funding. The business started with personal funds and support from family and friends and had to operate that way for a long time. In the tech space, it is still a bit challenging for first time founders and female founders to secure funding. Recently, Shuttlers crossed that hurdle when it raised $1.6 million in seed funding from several investors.
Olokesusi noted that this fund will be channelled towards expansion and growth in the coming months. “We have already made a presence in Abuja, so we are looking at using the funds to increase our scope to be a mass transit platform where people can access reliable and affordable mode of transportation they can trust. We will incorporate other modes of transportation like ferries, and small buses etc. and stay as aggregators and managers of the systems.”
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Some people get really comfortable running their business without proper branding until they see a new competitor step into the space and starts dominating in no time. This is often when they realize that they have been focused on marketing and making sales without any proper branding.
Speaking during the Nairametrics Business Half Hour show, Farouk Akinbola, Founder and CEO of Envy365 narrated that it could get challenging trying to convince them to see the need for a brand identity and how it works with their marketing strategy in the scheme of things.
“Some of them are content to just have a signboard with the business name, a logo that may or may not communicate their business essence, and a digital profile that does not say much. Branding is the distinguishing factor in a market that is filled with competitors. It tells the consumer that you are a better choice for them,” Akinbola explained.
As founder and CEO of a full-service branding agency – Envy365 – Akinbola noted that the market is getting very competitive and only strong brands will maintain their growth in the midst of it all.
“Your brand is what people feel that you are and what they know you for. Without strong branding, everything will be off. Even your marketing strategy may not come together the way you want it. Proper branding sets the stage for marketing, a product or service launch or any other thing. We prepare you to go out to the market, starting from your brand identity and perception. We work on your digital platforms and so on, and all these are part of your brand presence and identity.”
According to him, some come with a skeletal framework of what they want their business brand to communicate while some others know exactly what they want.
Envy365 started six years ago as a music marketing platform with Akinbola making graphic designs and taking photoshoots for music albums. At this time, it was more of a side hustle. He later moved on to start offering similar services to some fashion brands. After his National Youth Service Corps, he decided to structure it and make it into a proper branding and media agency.
Within six years of doing business, Envy365 now has a client base that is a mix of corporate bodies and individuals within and outside the country. The team offers a wide range of services around branding from graphics designs, to content creation, website design and hosting, IT, among others; to new brands as well as older brands seeking to revive and relaunch.
To fully equip himself to offer this service, Akinbola did a full branding course at the University of Arts, London, a photography course at the London School of Photography, as well as an IT course. In addition to having a first degree in business management, the team is undoubtedly qualified to render the services they do.
Based in Abuja, the team has built a diverse portfolio of several jobs and clients in five years, each unique in the offerings and delivery. However, Envy365 has been hit by currency devaluation in recent times, just like many other businesses operating locally and depending on some foreign product or service.
“We have to make some purchases and subscriptions in foreign currency, and with the current situation now, we are spending way more than we did last year. This affects costs of operations but not the services that we deliver,” Akibola stated.
Akinbola wants to push Envy365 to become an African brand in the next five years and a global brand in the decade.
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The World Bank said some years back, that over 230 million jobs will require digital skills by 2020. The figure is way higher than this now but the reality for developing countries in Africa is that the language barrier still stands as a barrier to rapid digital education towards a skilled economy. The pandemic made the digital gap even more obvious, with the lockdown causing loss of jobs and a general shift towards remote working and demand for digital skills.
And then, ScholarX comes up with LearnAm – a learning platform that allows people acquire knowledge and digital skills in different local languages
Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of ScholarX, Maxwell Ogunfuyi explained during the Nairametrics Business Half Hour show that this idea was born during the COVID-19 lockdown when a lot of businesses and individuals were forced to reevaluate their services in line with the digital shift.
Though ScholarX started as a scholarship aggregator and scholarships manager in 2016, the startup had to reevaluate as well and pivot into “a full-blown learning app that connects the underserved, the first time internet users with vocational and digital skills all in their mother-tongue, even as far as pidgin English.”
For a country that is the most populous nation in Africa, statistics show that about 90 percent of employment is informal, and a significant number of them also lack the digital skills they need to compete with their counterparts around the world. By creating a platform that teaches digital skills, ScholarX is closing the gap, making these ones job-ready, and making learning easier for them in their local languages.
“The goal is to build the largest skills platform for the underserved market in Africa so that everyone can be at an equal level for the relevant skills. Being in a rural area, or being unable to speak English language should not be a reason not to learn the digital skills you will need to survive in this economy. Our team comprises software developers, expert educators who are experienced in teaching adults, trainers who understand how adults learn, how their attention span is limited and so on, we also have content creators that know how to tell stories. No matter what level of formal education an adult has been able to attain, he or she can learn with LearnAm,” Ogunfuyi explained.
Barely a month after launch, the product has penetrated 15 cities in Nigeria with the recorded audio and video courses available in five languages – English language, Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa and Pidgin. The courses have been delivered in bite sizes so that a lot of information is covered in short lessons and users can learn at their pace and preferred language, and take the assessment afterwards.
For courses that offer certification, the users can also get certified afterwards. To further perfect what has been learned, interested users will be connected to an apprenticeship or marketplace where they can put those skills to use.
“The name LearnAM means Learn, Assessment and Marketplace. So depending on the course or skill one learns, he or she can be linked to our marketplace where the skill will be honed with real-time tasks,” Ogunfuyi noted.
The app is available on the Google playstore and Kaistore, and will soon be available on the iOS. Within the first month, Ogunfuyi noted that one of the most viewed courses was that of safe online practices. “Maybe due to increase in online frauds, people actually want to learn how they can safely conduct business online, how to keep their banking details safe and how to avoid being scammed”.
Using a freemium model, there are lots of free content for users to learn, but premium courses will be accessed for a fee. Though other e-learning applications are in the market, LearnAm is distinct from the others in that it does not offer the regular school-based educational content platform, but marketplace skills that will generally make people employable or independent. From courses like How To Repair Mobile Phones, How To Navigate Google, and How to Monetise YouTube, to other digital entrepreneurial courses like positioning one’s business online for visibility, and the likes.
Funding and partnerships Using a grant from GSMA, the ScholarX team were able to get the product out and running. GSMA had called for applications to its Innovation Fund for Internet Adoption and Digital Inclusion grant, and from there, LearnAm was selected. LearnAm also has a couple of angel investors behind the scene.
Also, other critical partnerships have played a huge role in speeding up the market acceptance and adoption of the product. For instance, there is a partnership with telecom brands like Airtel which allows for minimal data consumption on the app, so that users can learn a lot on a little budget.
“We factored the low internet penetration, and thanks to our partnership with Airtel, our app has low data consumption, and you can also download once and watch offline. With the KaiOS option, some communities can access these courses on little and inexpensive phones, and use little or no internet data to access them,” he said.
ScholarX also builds content for organisations that want to upskill their staffs, government agencies that have empowerment programs as well as independent creators who need content for educational purposes.
ScholarX hopes to get this solution across to 100 million users in Africa in the next five years, and to have helped create 230 million jobs by 2030.
“We have Africa in mind. We want the whole of Africa to know that they can learn whatever they want in their own languages. We will set up translators for other languages as we expand and grow,” Ogunguyi stated.
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