Built in Africa

Credits:

Music by Mixaund – mixaund.bandcamp.com

Upbeat Corporate – JP Bianchini https://jpbianchini.com

Narrator: For many companies, hiring can be one of the most daunting tasks. 

Ebun Okubanjo and Chidozie Okonkwo, serial entrepreneurs who run Fitness Central, a chain of wellness and fitness centres in Lagos, Nigeria know this all to well

In one particular incident, they were interviewing candidates to head their fitness centre. A particular applicant had an excellent resume with various qualifications and degrees but at the end of quite an underwhelming interview, the founders were left startled.

Ebun Okubanjo: “My co-founder said, ‘dude, his degrees are probably fake’.”

Narrator: That’s Ebun Okubanjo, Co-founder and CEO of Bento.

Ebun Okubanjo: “I was like, ‘how can you have fake degrees?’, I was naive. And he was like, ‘dude, there’s a market for it’. So I thought to myself, ‘if someone is faking a degree to get a job as a head of fitness, then people must be out there faking degrees to get jobs as accountants, as nurses, as lawyers and a whole bunch of stuff’.”

Narrator: On this episode of Built in Africa, we take a look at how Nigerian payroll software startup, Bento is working to influence the monthly spend culture of Nigerians.

The interview experience inspired Ebun and Chidozie to launch Verifi.ng, an HR platform originally built to help companies in Nigeria verify the credentials of potential employees.

Ebun Okubanjo: “We started it off as a hobby. The idea was to help employers verify degrees. So, everytime you get a CV, we plug in to all the schools and we would use the matriculation number to let you know if that degree or certificate is real”.

Narrator: But they hit a roadblock. Most of the schools they approached did not have reliable data

Ebun Okubanjo: “Now, while we were working with the schools, we decided to make a company out of it. We asked ourselves, ‘ beyond education, what else do you need to do if you are onboarding a new employee?’ Often times, employers would do work history verification

Narrator: But then again, verifying employee’s work history can be a challenge. Many employees have found ways to game the system by using friends and family to pose as past employers. 

So how do you solve a problem like this? fake past employers?

Ebun Okubanjo: “Salaries! That’s it, it’s salaries! The day they started paying you and the day they stopped paying you is how we do employment verification. Unless you worked for free. And very quickly, we realised that salary data was out there and it existed in a way that was fragmented, didn’t make sense, wasn’t coherent, we couldn’t use it for employment verification and we couldn’t use it for anything else

So we now realised that we had to go all the way back. So we can’t clean up the data at the schools, because that’s just a mess. But we felt that we can clean up salary data, not historical but from this particular moment going forward”

Narrator: This was back in 2016, Since then, Verifi.ng has signed up businesses cutting across different sectors including Mavin Records, Hotels.ng, Lost in Lagos, Bamboo, Branch and even Techpoint Africa, helping them to pay salaries, taxes, pensions, and health insurance for their employees.

In 2020, Verifi.ng was renamed to Bento Africa. Ebun explains the reasoning behind this.

Ebun Okubanjo: “Well, as the story and the focus of the company changed, where it now became that salaries itself was this multi-faceted, rich point of convergence where a lot of things happened, and that it was going to be our focus, the name no longer matched. And since the vision changed, the name had to change. And for us, when we look at salaries, we see the intersection of private funds and where it meets statutory deductions from the government, where it meets pension payments, healthcare payments, taxes, perhaps garnishments and definitely salaries. 

So because it fit into all these tiny little boxes, the name Bento came about and what we want to do is expand those boxes to go beyond just pensions, healthcare, taxes to now expanding it so it can cover more of life, what we consume and how we consume it.”

Narrator: But what does “what we consume and how we consume” mean? 

Say an average employee in the US and Nigeria earns about $60,000 a year. They both need to buy a $40,000-car, a $1,000-iPhone while living in a $12,000 yearly apartment with $5,000 worth of food, healthcare, and household services.

For the employee in the US who basically lives on a credit system, this isn’t much of a problem. 

Ebun Okubanjo: “Depending on my age, depending on my education, lenders and service providers in America can look at me and say, ‘this guy makes $5,000 a month, he wants to buy a $40,000-car but he doesn’t have $40,000 now. But if he pays $500 a month for the next 6 years, he can pay it off. Well, we think he’s going to be employed over the next 6 years. So we are going to sell him the car at a 7% interest’. 

I’m happy to get the $40,000-car now and pay $500 every month. That’s an incentive for me to keep a job because I know if I don’t keep my job, I can’t make my car payments, they’ll come and repossess the car and the next time I try to buy a car, someone won’t sell me a car, right?”

Narrator: But it’s different for employees in Nigeria. They might need to borrow money to maintain this lifestyle because most vital services in this country are paid for annually. The $40,000-car must be paid for immediately, same with the $1,000-iPhone, and the $5,000-apartment.

This is what Bento wants to offer Nigerian employees: the opportunity to pay for services on a monthly basis. 

Ebun Okubanjo: “We are saying, can we use this tool to make the lives of employees almost similar to the lives of their Western counterparts”?

Narrator: When the company still went by the name Verifi.ng, employees could already access healthcare services and salary advance from third-party providers, Hygeia, and Zedvance respectively. But with its rebranding, Bento now enables monthly payments for rent, electricity, and school fees services.

How does it achieve this? By partnering with niche startups playing in these spaces – Schoolable, Kwaba and Buypower

Schoolable provides stakeholders of K-12 schools access to credit. In essence, they help parents pay the bulk tuition of their children while they pay back every month with interest. Kwaba allows for flexible rent payment options for rent seekers between 6 to 12 months. 

BuyPower, on the other hand, helps Nigerians to make seamless utility bill payments on demand.

Ebun Okubanjo: “Buypower was not necessarily in that but they saw the potential.”

Narrator: Via end-to-end API integrations with these platforms, employees who use the Bento app can access Schoolable, Kwaba, and BuyPower services, in addition to requesting salary advances and accessing healthcare services.

Ebun Okubanjo: “More than that, of course you can still do the salary advances, but essentially you can log in and the same way you would take a salary advance, is almost the same way you would access Schoolable, Kwaba and BuyPower. The only thing is that we will send you into their universe for that initial collection but subsequently, if your school fees is 15k that has to be deducted every month, you don’t have to do anything. When you get paid, we’ll just deduct the 15k, send it to Schoolable for you. If it’s your rent, if it’s 40k, we’ll just deduct the 40k. 

Now the thing that you get from this is that because of the deduction at source, we’re solving a big problem.”

Narrator: So, for instance, if you earn ₦100,000 (about $209.60) per month and you subscribe to cumulatively pay ₦50,000 – about $104.80 – monthly via Bento, at the end of each month, that amount is deducted and sent to the service providers immediately, subtly eliminating the chance to make late payments. 

Ebun Okubanjo: “Can we in the process of protecting people protect lenders? Protect people who offer goods and services? We think so.”

Narrator: More importantly, Bento is able to offer lower rates to employees 

Ebun Okubanjo: “Because our rates are limited to employee resignation, employee termination, or business insolvency, which are not things that happen on a rather frequent basis, we are able to work with the lenders that fund Schoolable, Kwaba and say, ‘hey, these loans are cheaper, this risk is less. So rather than taking 6%, can you take 4%?’ And as we continue to perform, and they see the numbers, we believe that this credit risk will continue to drop.” 

Narrator: Like Ebun, the founders of Schoolable, Kwaba, and BuyPower have lauded the partnership as being beneficial to all parties involved.

For Obinna Molokwu, founder of Kwaba, the way rent is being paid in the country is fundamentally flawed. 

With millions of Nigerians living in rented apartments and spending a great deal of their income on rent payment, one cannot overemphasise the importance of how their rent is paid, in this case, yearly.

Having built Kwaba last year to solve this problem, Obinna thinks the partnership will drive Kwaba’s adoption as it will be brought directly to employees’ fingertips.

Obinna Molokwu: “We don’t see any sense why renters should pay their rent yearly when their wages are paid monthly. That’s why we built Kwaba. So, if you are talking about optimising your life as a worker in Nigeria, Bento should literally be your starter pack. So as Kwaba is facilitating payment for one of the most fundamental of human needs, which is housing, it only makes sense to partner with Bento to bring Kwaba to workers’ fingertips. So, moving forward both Kwaba and Bento stand to gain a strategic partnership where both products are properly blended to serve the Nigerian worker. Both platforms have thousands of users that need complimentary services that both Bento and Kwaba have to offer. For us, we see it as a meal deal. Why have Kwaba alone when you can have Kwaba in a Bento? That’s how we see it essentially”

Narrator: That’s Obinna Molokwu of Kwaba

In their own ways, individually and collectively, Bento, Kwaba, BuyPower, and Schoolable are trying to influence the monthly spend culture in Nigeria. However, how well will this catch on with Nigerians?

Ebun thinks it might take some getting used to. Despite the fact that paying rent yearly is a herculean task, most Nigerians will prefer to do that than pay monthly because of how they understand credit risk and interest.

For instance, if Bento was to charge a yearly interest of 14% on a rent of ₦1.5m ($3,144), a user will subsequently pay ₦142,500 ($298.74) each month and ₦1.71m ($3,584.90) at the end of the year. The question on the minds of consumers will then be “why pay ₦1.71 million in 12 months when I can pay ₦1.5 million at once?”

But Ebun remains positive

Ebun Okubanjo: “I believe the future of our economy is inevitably going to be one that is credit-based. And that transition is happening now.”

Thank you for listening to  Built In Africa.

This script was adapted by Heritage Kene-Okafor and edited by Muyiwa Matuluko

Research and interview by Heritage Kene-Okafor

Sound design by Oghenekaro Obrutu

This is a production of Techpoint Africa

I am Heritage Kene-Okafor

Please subscribe, share and drop a review of this podcast, by searching for ‘Built in Africa’ on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also email us feedback at [email protected].

For ad placements: [email protected].

For more stories on startups and innovation in Africa, please visit Techpoint.africa

This episode is brought to you by HostGator.com, web hosting that scales from easy to expert.

Credits:

Music by Mixaund – mixaund.bandcamp.com

Narrator 1: In June 2020, Obinna Ukwuani, a Nigerian serial entrepreneur, was appointed Chief Digital Officer for the Bank of Kigali, the largest commercial bank in the East African nation of Rwanda. Such Pan-African appointments are not new, but the circumstances surrounding his, make Obinna’s story truly compelling. .

Born and raised in Washington DC, a high school valedictorian, with an economics degree from MIT to boot, you could easily expect Obinna to take his pick of jobs from some of the best companies in North America. But he had his eyes set elsewhere.

Obinna Ukwuani: “For whatever reason, I just really felt a desire to be a part of working in Nigeria, building up Nigeria, nation-building, creating opportunities, in my own small way. I felt I was gifted and I wanted my best work to be in a place where the impact would be maximised and closest to home.”

Narrator 1: On this episode of Built in Africa, Obinna Ukwuani takes us on his journey from shaping the development of robotics in Africa, to spearheading digital initiatives at the Bank of Kigali, Rwanda. 

Obinna’s passion for nation-building did not just come out of the blue.

Obinna Ukwuani: “When I was 11 or 12, my dad sent me and my older sister to boarding school in Enugu, Nigeria. I wasn’t a bad kid, I was always a top student, but he really felt a need to make sure that I understood where we came from.”

Narrator 1: According to Obinna, those two years were pretty tough, but he admits they had the intended effect of helping him understand his roots in Nigeria.

Obinna Ukwuani: “When I had finished my education there and I returned to the US to finish the last 3 years of high school. I graduated, was accepted into MIT, I then travelled to Nigeria, I think the summer after my freshman year in the university. And when I got to Enugu – this had now been maybe 4 or 5 years since I had graduated – I met with my peers and friends I had made during the time that I had spent there, and we caught up and I was telling them about my experience. I told them I was in MIT but they actually didn’t really believe me.”

Narrator 1: To prove that he was going to MIT, Obinna’s friends asked him to build a website on the spot

Obinna Ukwuani: “So I just put together some HTML and CSS, did some Photoshop and all that stuff. And I actually built a website, sat down for hours and just did it. They were amazed.”

Narrator 1: Obinna’s encounter with his peers at Enugu literally inspired him to birth Exposure Robotics, an academy looking to expose young minds to the field of robotics, which he launched in the summer of 2012, while still at MIT. 

Prior to that, he had engaged with the District of Columbia Public Schools where he taught robotics fundamentals to high school students. 

Obinna Ukwuani: Before I graduated from high school I was the president of the First Robotics League team and my mentor, math teacher and team coach, Mr. Kenneth Lesley, invited me to teach for the District of Columbia Public Schools, as a summer tutor for robotics. And, I guess, doing the actual job, I discovered that I was really good at teaching and I really enjoyed it. 

Till today, there’s really no feeling like it. It’s a truly transformative thing teaching someone a new skill. From there it just became another skill I put on my quiver. 

I taught robotics for 2 summers and then this led to all the other things that I did; Exposure Robotics, NESA by Makers, Makers Robotics Academy, etc. 

Narrator 1: It then became really clear to Obinna that the skills he had gained, and his various experiences, would prove very useful in Africa. So in 2015, his decision to move back to Lagos, Nigeria was so much easier. 

Narrator 2: In January 2018, he founded the Makers Robotics Academy in Rwanda and partnered with the Bank of Kigali to provide intensive robotics training to over 40 children.

Ukwuani is very proud of the impact the tutoring programme has had on the lives of the students. He even shared some of them at Techpoint Inspired 2018. 

Obinna Ukwuani: Over 113 students from all over every corner of Nigeria and even a few from Ghana. It’s the impact on the students, and maybe the fact that myself and my classmates that I led, we were brave enough to do this when everyone else was on Wall Street and stuff, we were focused enough to make this happen.”

Narrator 2: Obinna’s various ventures have brought a lot of Africans in the diaspora who have also been inspired to help contribute to the development of Africans in various capacities. 

Obinna Ukwuani: “In the process, for the 3 summers that we did this thing, I also brought foreigners to Nigeria, other Nigerians to Nigeria who would not have visited otherwise, other Africans to Nigeria, Ghanaians, American whites, Cameronians, Nigerian-Americans like myself, I brought them to Nigeria for a 2-month period and we all just had a blast, taught a bunch of kids, made a lot of impact and really just had an experience that all of us would carry with us for the rest of our lives. I think that was one of the things that I’m really proud of.”

Narrator 2: So Obinna and a number of his classmates at MIT decided to embark on the robotics project at Kigali. 

He believes its success, among other things, also contributed to his appointment as Chief digital officer for the Bank of Kigali.

Obinna Ukwuani: “I worked directly with the CEO and my direct predecessor, the CDO at the time. So it was the entire marketing department to execute that and had a number of relationships in Rwanda as well; I had been visiting for the last 3 years, very frequently every other month.

It’s also worth mentioning that in Rwanda, the leadership is really keen on giving young people responsibility; sometimes responsibility that seems super huge. So I just consider myself fortunate to have been chosen to contribute and I’m grateful that they acknowledged what I have to give. 

Narrator 2: Besides his various tutoring roles, Obinna has also ventured into Agriculture by founding and chairing Bruks oil mills, a midstream agro-processing company. He also led business operations and product management for Nigerian Payments company, Paystack.

Interestingly, Obinna’s role as chief digital officer at the Bank of Kigali converges on his experiences in Agriculture and digital payments. He is primarily responsible for the division known as the Digital Factory (DF). This division includes engineers of all skill sets, product managers, data scientists, data analysts, and business analysts that work together to build channels and innovative products and services on behalf of the bank.

Obinna Ukwuani: “Like many banks, the Bank of Kigali had outsourced a lot of applications that are critical to delivering services to customers, whether it’s USSD or mobile applications. The DF was set up 2 years ago to start in-housing a lot of this while introducing new products and services like Ikofi to the market.”

Narrator 1: Ikofi is a digital wallet that offers financial services that are mainly focused on farmers, agro-dealers, agri-businesses, and other players in the agricultural ecosystem.

Obinna Ukwuani: “The easiest way to describe it to call it a direct competitor to the likes of MTN MoMo (Mobile Money) in Rwanda. In Rwanda, I think, around 60% of all the money that moves electronically, from a value standpoint, is done as mobile money transfers.”

Narrator 1: In Rwanda, you’re more likely to use mobile money than a debit card, and Finclusion estimates that 1 in 4 Rwandans use the service. According to Obinna, almost everyone has a USSD for MTN MoMo, which dominates the electronic payment space in the East African nation. 

Obinna Ukwuani: “That’s the way things are just done here. Whether you’re paying a carpenter  to work on your house or you’re buying a television at the supermarket, everyone has a USSD code for MTN MoMo so MTN as a telco dominates the electronic payments space. So there are obviously a lot of limitations to that. There are also systemic advantages to having a reliable way to move money around. 

But for banks, especially local banks, local companies, the government would love to have a local player with more sway in the digital payments space. Ikofi was a way for the Bank to get their products directly to the unbanked. It’s a way of bringing more potential customers into the Bank of Kigali ecosystem. 

Narrator 1: The Bank of Kigali is the largest bank in Rwanda with 79 networked branches and over a thousand staff. The government owned a majority stake in the bank before the company went public.

Though it had tried expanding to other countries, the entry of Diane Karusisi as CEO shifted focus to further deepen the bank’s presence in Rwanda and bring more financially excluded people into the sector.

Obinna insists that Ikofi’s main focus, for now, remains players in the agricultural sector because, like several African countries, an estimated 60% of Rwanda’s population is employed in the agricultural sector, contributing over 30% of the GDP.

Obinna Ukwuani: “And a lot of these people are not financially included. So the first step to that is to get them on some sort of payments network. Give them a place to store their money, give them access to different types of financial services. This is the dream of Ikofi and it’s very much a journey that is just beginning and it’s actually a really big part of my mandate to make sense out of Ikofi and the opportunities that exist.”

Narrator 1: Besides Ikofi, Obinna plans to gain inspiration from his experience with Paystack and the fintech sector in Nigeria to help develop the payment space in Rwanda, bring it up to date with world-class standards, engage in predictive analysis and to foster lending activities to farmers among several other initiatives

But Obinna maintains that tutoring young Africans remains his core passion. However, initiatives such as NESA by Makers have been placed on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic and for now, the Bank of Kigali’s digital initiative remains his main focus

Obinna Ukwuani: “I think definitely at some point, we’ll definitely see some more tutoring from me. Maybe another education venture or something else in the future. I still have investors who even now want to continue working with me on educational ventures. So yeah, I think definitely at some point.. But we have a huge mandate at the bank and I’ll just focus on that for the time being. But definitely, I’m looking forward to one day getting back to where I started.”

Narrator 1: Obinna believes his experiences over the last few years have somewhat prepared him for this role. He hopes to make his home country, Nigeria really proud with the work he’s doing in Rwanda.

Thank you for listening to  Built In Africa. This script was adapted by Emmanuel Paul and edited by Muyiwa Matuluko

Research and interview by Emmanuel Paul

Sound design by Oghenekaro Obrutu

This is a production of Techpoint Africa

I am Emmanuel Paul and I am Oluwanifemi Kolawole

Please subscribe, share and drop a review of this podcast, by searching for ‘Built in Africa’ on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also email us feedback at [email protected].

For ad placements: [email protected]

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For more stories on startups and innovation in Africa, please visit Techpoint.africa

Credits:
Underneath the World by Mid-Air Machine www.freemusicarchive.org
Additional sound effects from www.zapsplat.com

…… A typical conversation between a fraudster and a prospective victim ..

[SFX] Phone rings … picks.

Frausdter: Good day sir, my name  is James, from Access Bank. Am I speaking with Mr Koffi Zawadi?

Customer: Yes, you are. How can I help you?

Fraudster: Yeah, so there’s a problem with your account verification and I’m calling to walk you through it. 

Customer: Hope I don’t have to be coming to your bank? I’m very busy. 

Fraudster: No sir, all you need to do is give us some details. I can see you live at No. 6 Ozumba Mbadiwe and your date of birth is 5th of July, 1987. 

Customer: Yes, correct.

Fraudster: Okay, just provide me with your BVN, and ATM card details.

Customer: ATM card details and BVN? Why?

Fraudster: It’s for verification, sir. Don’t you want to sort out your problem?

Customer: See, you think I don’t know who you are?… (hurls insults and fades out)

Narrator: If you’ve received such a call before, you probably know at least ten people who have also. And this is because these types of calls are pretty rampant. But have you ever wondered how these people know your name, your address, and sometimes your account details? 

On this episode of Built in Africa, we delve into how Ghanaian based startup, BACE Group (spelt as BACE) uses state of the art technology to tackle the problem of identity theft in Africa.

As the African continent comes to grips with new technologies, research has shown that its people and companies are highly susceptible to cyber thefts and fraud. These incidents are rarely reported by companies, so it’s actually difficult to arrive at a solution. 

However, at the 2017 edition of the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), four young African entrepreneurs — two Ivorians, a Nigerian, and a Ghanaian — decided that this was the challenge they wanted to overcome.

Charlette N’Guessan, Arinze Christopher Ugwu, Samuel Sowah Mensah, and Jean Cedric Attiembonon all met at the MEST programme, and in 2018, the BACE group was formed. 

Voice actor: “Our solution, BACE API, is a digital identity verification system that uses facial recognition powered by Artificial intelligence.”

Narrator: That’s Charlette N’Guessan, BACE Group’s CEO and the only woman on the founding team.  As a network and software engineer, N’Guessan, has trained organisations on the adoption of technology in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

For N’Guessan and her teammates, if a veritable verification-as-a-service product must be built, it has to make use of the commonest means of biometric identification fit for the African market – face recognition.

Voice actor: “We were looking at something that would make our solution stand out from the existing security software available on the market. So, we decided to use facial recognition as a biometric technology because we believe that the uniqueness of the individual is at the heart of good digital identity management. 

I mean like really, to be honest, facial recognition is the most natural of all biometric measurements. After all, as humans, we recognise ourselves not by looking at our fingers or irises but by looking at our faces.”

Narrator: With this perspective in mind, they went ahead to build an application programming interface (API) for facial recognition which companies can plug into for their ID verification and validation needs.

So how does the BACE API work? 

Voice actor: “So, the API begins its verification process by confirming if the person is alive, real and not a robot. It then presents the deductions to a human behind the screen who validates the person’s identity.

Simultaneously, it extracts the data on the identity document provided and matches it with facial biometrics in an issuing authority or government department.”

Narrator: Besides solving the problem of identity fraud, the BACE API will also help financial institutions provide their services to their customers remotely. Customers no longer have to visit physical offices since they can verify their identities from the comfort of their homes. 

As a B2B solution, N’Guessan confirms the API is built on high-security standards and can run on existing systems. Although with a particular focus on financial institutions, the BACE Group also serves establishments in transportation, telecommunications, security, and schools.

The pandemic, for all its troubles, has been somewhat helpful to BACE’s cause. More companies — especially those that require high levels of customer-facing activity — now see reasons to adopt its innovative solution 

Voice actor: “You know, using our product, businesses can now authenticate and onboard new or existing customers without having to show up in person. The whole process is transparent, secure, remote, and digital. Imagine the level of ease this brings.”

Narrator: Operating an advanced innovation like BACE can be challenging in emerging markets like Africa. Asides the fact that businesses do not fully trust the startup yet to handle private data, government regulations don’t exactly encourage innovation. But N’Guessan says the startup will not rest on its laurels. 

Voice actor: (Chuckles) “Well, we are aware of this, and we have been working to build trust, educate our target, and build quality and secure products. Also, we signed strategic partnerships to get more support and drive our works.”

Narrator: N’Guessan, recently won the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation by the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering, and she believes it will help the business earn the recognition it deserves.

To leverage this, the startup plans to push for some major partnerships, intensify customer acquisition, and include other African markets.

As the pandemic spread across Africa, BACE Group made a very strategic move to acquire more customers. It allowed businesses struggling with KYC and online identity breaches to integrate their APIs at a discounted rate. While this was an incentive, the selected businesses must be willing to use the tool for three months.

As the startup moves into a full commercialisation stage, the founder believes that there are always untapped opportunities in Africa that create room for innovation. Ultimately, the success of a startup on the continent strongly depends on how well it can survive despite challenges.

Thank you for listening to Built In Africa.

The voice you heard in this episode for N’Guessan was simulated. 

This script was adapted by Emmanuel Paul

Research and interview by Oluwanifemi Kolawole

Sound design by Oghenekaro Obrutu

This is a production of Techpoint Africa

I am Precious Mogoli

Please subscribe, share and drop a review of this podcast, by searching for ‘Built in Africa’ on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also email us feedback at [email protected]

For more stories on startups and innovation in Africa, please visit Techpoint.africa

This episode is brought to you by HostGator.com, web hosting that scales from easy to expert.

Credits:
Upbeat Corporate by JP Bianchini – @jpmbianchini
Optimistic / Inspirational by Mixaund – mixaund.bandcamp.com
Safe In Your Arms by Mixaund – mixaund.bandcamp.com
Additional music and sound effects from www.zapsplat.com

Narrator: On July 30, 2020, Nigerian-based Kiakiaprint announced its expansion to South Africa and partnership with Australian-based online design and publishing company, Canva.

The news came barely a month after Canva raised $60 million, at a $6bn valuation, and partnered with FedEx Office to break into the US market. Canva’s next move was into Africa, and it chose to partner with Kiakiaprint. 

For a startup like Kiakiaprint which prints and delivers custom designs on demand, it’s quite a perfect match.

Tunde Ademuyiwa: “Canva has 30 million users globally. Before the lockdown, they were 20 million and it’s growing.”

Narrator: That’s Tunde Ademuyiwa, co-founder and CEO of Kiakiaprint. 

Tunde Ademuyiwa: “They align with our vision. Now, our vision is, help people grow their business, leveraging print technology. When it comes to design technology, sorry nobody beats Canva. It’s easy to use, it’s straightforward. That’s why the partnership just made sense”

Narrator: On this episode of Built in Africa, we put the spotlight on how Nigerian print-on-demand startup, Kiakiaprint is taking its business global with Canva partnership and South Africa expansion.

Tunde Ademuyiwa didn’t set out to start a printing company, he just happened to stumble on the opportunity.

Tunde Ademuyiwa:: “If you asked me back in school, in my wildest of dreams, I never imagined the print industry. Globally, the print industry is worth about $800 billion. It’s bigger than the music industry, it’s massive. I think it’s the 3rd biggest industry in the world. But I didn’t know it was this massive. Not one person can cover the entire print industry”

Narrator: It all began in 2012, when Tunde had an idea to make a business out of embedded chips in cards. He took a loan from a close friend and started his first company, Vocal Circuits    Limited, a year later in 2013. The startup sought to offer bespoke audio and video print services to clients from different industries.

The loan was used to launch the company’s main product, Speaking Cards. And during the Ramadan, a popular religious event held by Muslims, Ademuyiwa decided to make 2,000 copies of Speaking Cards with Islamic messages and announcements embedded in a brochure.

Tunde Ademuyiwa: “This was around June, it was a 6-month loan. The plan was to pay back back in December.”

Narrator: Unfortunately, due to the absence of a proper distribution network, they weren’t able to sell everything. 

Tunde Ademuyiwa: “I spoke to my friend and, for some reason, she just trusted me. I was the one who was bothered, she wasn’t bothered. I was humbled because she just trusted me”.

Narrator: To make the best of a bad situation, Tunde decided to pitch to banks and presented Speaking Cards as a way to teach unbanked Nigerians about mobile money.

Tunde Ademuyiwa: “The target for mobile money are people at the bottom of the pyramid. People at that level can’t read and write so, how do you market mobile money to them? You have to use their Mother Tongue. So we created speaking cards on mobile money for these banks and they loved it, it was awesome.”

Narrator: It took almost a year to get the first client. But eventually, First Bank, Nigeria jumped on the project and launched their Firstmonie initiative on Speaking Cards. And he was able to pay back his friend’s loan with 40% interest.

Another big break would come during Nigeria’s general elections campaign in late 2014. Here, the company programmed campaign messages, in local languages, into illustrated brochures. That period, he made over ₦10m ($33,000) in sales from one client and more from his line of  network. This money and extra revenue from subsequent clients kept the company operational.

All the while, Tunde made his card prints in Shomolu, a very popular printing hub in Lagos, Nigeria, which back in the 70s and 80s was a hotspot for people coming from Francophone countries to print.

Although people still frequently visit Shomolu, the suburb has witnessed a decline and is now occupied by mostly unprofessional artisans who deliver subpar work in a largely unregulated environment.

In a bid to have some control on the quality and output, Tunde bought a digital printing machine that could print cards faster than a regular printer would. Soon enough, he had an epiphany. 

Tunde Ademuyiwa: “I was like, we weren’t always making speaking cards. So I asked myself, ‘this machine that is printing the speaking cards, can’t it print flyers and business cards too?”

Narrator: Tunde and his team told a couple of friends about the new business, which at the time didn’t have a name, and via word of mouth, it spread quickly. The steady influx of customers through referrals made him believe he was doing something right. He decided to make it more open by creating an online presence and getting a name: Kiakiaprint.

Tunde Ademuyiwa::  “These guys are coming to us through referrals. They don’t know us from anywhere, yet they’re trusting us. It shows that we are doing something good. So we asked, why not open it up to a bigger audience? And that’s where the idea of online print came”

Narrator: Motivated by a friend who promised to invest, Tunde came up with a business plan for Kiakiaprint. Meanwhile, he had to travel to the US for a holiday, visiting his elder brother, Bunmi. This was in 2017.

They got talking and he casually mentioned Kiakiaprint and his vision for on-demand-printing. His brother was so excited by the idea that he soon became his co-founder and now CTO.

The second co-founder, Gbolade Ogunfowote, met Tunde via a mutual friend and joined the team and now serves as the chief product officer.

Tunde Ademuyiwa:  “So that’s when we started Kiakiaprint, which was November 2017. My brother is the co-founder and CTO. Gbolade is also a tech guy. I studied engineering but I’m the only ‘non-techie’ person. I just follow the money”

Narrator: With zero external funding, the company was bootstrapped using personal funds and recurring revenue. To save resources, they decided to launch with a white-label solution.

Tunde Ademuyiwa: Initially, because we were trying to validate what we were doing, we got a white-label solution from an Indian company customised for us. But it had its limitations”

Narrator: Tunde and his co-founders knew they would have to build a proprietary platform eventually but their immediate priority was to grow the business organically, focusing on a lot of small and medium-sized businesses.

Tunde Ademuyiwa: “What we were doing, we were just signing company accounts. There are different kinds of companies. There are the big wigs, those ones don’t pay immediately. Then there are the ones in the middle who pay 70% upfront while the small companies pay in full. So their money was the seed for the business. That’s how we were running and that really helped us”

Narrator: Within a short time, Kiakiaprint has established itself as arguably one of Nigeria’s best printing companies. 

So far, Kiakiaprint has grown to 30 employees serving a clientele of about 3,000 customers across Nigeria. Most of these clients are small and medium-sized businesses. But major clients include MTN Nigeria, Pizza Hut, PiggyVest, ENYO, RedBull, PepsiCo, and Jack Daniels, among others.

But Tunde is not satisfied; he has his eyes set on more growth.

Tunde Ademuyiwa: Vistaprint makes $2.2 billion in revenue. They’re the biggest print company in America. MOO does about 150 million dollars. It’s a British company but they are based in America. How many companies here do you need to pitch to get that revenue?” 

Narrator: Tunde points out that technology presented both Vistaprint and MOO an opportunity to scale and they took it. For him, it’s time for Kiakiaprint to seize that opportunity too.

Tunde Ademuyiwa: “We’ve built our own technology now, we have our own tech team. The vision is Uber for print, wherever you are, no matter where you are, you can print on Kiakiaprint. We are now a technology company. The only reason why we have assets is because here in Nigeria, the market is not standardised. So we have to put in assets on the ground to make sure we have what it takes to serve the customer comfortably.”

Narrator: Tunde is already thinking global for Kiakiaprint. He boasts that the Nigerian company currently has the capacity to serve West Africa. Nevertheless, they chose to expand to South Africa first. When you think about the reasoning behind the decision, it makes sense. 

You see, depending on who you ask, either Nigeria or South Africa is Africa’s biggest economy. But it is a consensus that both are Africa’s largest economies.

However, South Africa has a higher GDP per capita than Nigeria. According to the Deloitte Customer Review, South Africa has a per capita income of $7,500, compared to Nigeria’s $1,630. Also, South Africa has a credit system that works, unlike Nigeria.

Tunde Ademuyiwa: “Any market where there’s some sort of credit system, it stimulates the economy

Narrator: For Kiakiaprint, expanding South, rather than the immediate West made financial sense.

Tunde Ademuyiwa: “I want to be able to capture the value and capture it fast and we think SA is better positioned at this than any other African country.”

Narrator: The three-year-old startup formed partnerships with local print companies in South  Africa that offer similar high standards of print. So in essence, Kiakiaprint doesn’t need to establish a physical presence there.

Tunde Ademuyiwa: “Like I said, the assets we have here are for West Africa. The market there is more standardised”

Narrator: Customers in both countries now have the option to either upload a design, hire a designer via the platform or, thanks to the partnership with the Australian company, use their Canva design templates before going ahead to print.

Tunde Ademuyiwa: “We are making things easier for the customers, even in their market. But the print companies there are going to benefit from us. So we are bringing business to them. What should be their focus is to make sure that there is activity on their machines, and that’s where we come in”.

Narrator: On future expansion, what is imminent for Kiakiaprint is not necessarily moving to another African country but expanding outside Africa entirely.

Tunde Ademuyiwa: “What we do, and our vision, we are not an African company. The vision is global. With the convenience of our platform, and partnerships with local print companies that deliver value, nothing stops us from going to any country in the world”

Narrator: Kiakiaprint has always been under the radar since launching but has witnessed astonishing growth. But with its expansion and partnership, it’ll have to adjust to a new phase of being in the public’s eye and pursuing growth simultaneously.

Having been completely bootstrapped so far, is there any chance that Kiakiaprint will be raising equity investments soon?

Tunde Ademuyiwa: “Actually, we are in that discussion now, we are now beginning to think of it. Because, the scale of what we want to achieve right now… we’ve pushed it to a decent level. We’ve pushed ourselves to this level so right now, I’m more comfortable with discussing with potential investors.”

Thank you for listening to  Built In Africa.

This script was adapted by Muyiwa Matuluko

Research and interview by Heritage Kene-Okafor

Sound design by Oghenekaro Obrutu

This is a production of Techpoint Africa

I am Precious Mogoli.

Please subscribe, share and drop a review of this podcast, by searching for ‘Built in Africa’ on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also email us feedback at [email protected].

For more stories on startups and innovation in Africa, please visit Techpoint.africa

Credits
West Africana by Hicham Chahidi – http://www.musicscreen.org/
SFX from http://www.freesoundslibrary.com

(Female robotic voice): New SMS. Reading…

Voice actor: [In mystic tone and voice]: The full moon has scared the monkeys…

Narrator: Without the proper context, that message makes no sense. But if you are a small-scale farmer living in Mbeere, Embu county, Kenya, it means only one thing…

On this episode of Built in Africa, we will be looking at how South African agritech startup, ITIKI uses artificial intelligence to simplify rainfall forecasts for small-scale farmers around Africa.

Most African economies rely on the activities of small-scale farmers who, according to the United Nations, produce about 80% of the continent’s food.

With nearly 95% of their planting activities dependent on rainfall, accurately predicting weather conditions is crucial for small-scale farmers who can lose everything to wrong cropping decisions. This is where ITIKI comes in.

Professor Muthoni Masinde: “The idea behind ITIKI is to produce relevant drought forecasts for small-scale farmers”

Narrator: That’s Professor Muthoni Masinde, Kenyan computer scientist and founder and CEO of South Africa based ITIKI.

Prof. Muthoni: “The reason why we use the keyword ‘relevant’ is because there’s so much information out there. If you look at your phone, there’s a forecast. If you turn on the TV, there’s a forecast. If you open a page in a newspaper, there’s a forecast. But for us, we realised that none of that is useful to the small-scale farmers, so we went about creating a solution that works for them.”

Narrator: What is novel about ITIKI’s model is that it combines indigenous knowledge with technology to guarantee accurate predictions, and deliver them in a relevant, yet inexpensive way. 

Prof. Muthoni: “We relay that information to them in formats and semantics that relate to their context. So it’s an SMS in their local language and it does not tell them things like ‘near normal rainfall’ or ‘300 millimetres of rainfall’. Rather, it will tell them, ‘this season, you’ll get rainfall that is not enough to grow your usual maize, so you may consider planting millet or sorghum’. When it’s very near the cessation, when the rain is about to stop, a week before, it tells them, ‘Ish… you need to stop planting because, in the next 3 weeks, there’ll be no rain. 

So things like those, they relate to them and that’s how we managed to get to their hearts.

Narrator: Remember that seemingly cryptic message from earlier? A typical SMS to ITIKI users reads just like that.

Prof. Muthoni: “The moon has scared the  monkeys. So that means that in 3 days time, it will start raining, and this rain will be so short-lived that you have to hurry in your planting.”

Narrator: In case you are wondering, yes Prof. Muthoni grew up in one of such villages, so she has first-hand experience and understanding.

Prof. Muthoni: “It’s simple but it’s so rich. When you mention the moon scaring the monkeys, it immediately rings a bell in their minds because they have used that as a sign before. The only new information they have is exactly the number of days, which they may not be aware of, and the nature of the rain”.

Narrator: The groundwork for ITIKI was laid between 2011 and 2012, while Muthoni was doing her postgraduate research at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. 

In 2013, with the help of a team of researchers that she led at the incubation hub of the Central University of Technology, Free State, South Africa, she experimented further with the models and algorithms that help ITIKI predict droughts. 

While carrying out live experiments, in Mbeere, Embu county, Kenya, it became clear that ITIKI needed to be launched as a business.

Prof. Muthoni: “So my original idea was really not to do a business. My original idea was to help my people. By design, the tool was tested in my own village, with my mum, my sisters, my relatives, my neighbours. I decided I was going to do it for free, in the sense that I was willing to pay the ambassadors from my own personal salary”

Narrator: But there was a problem. Even though the product was free, many of the farmers expected to be paid to use it. It was almost like they did not appreciate the value of the solution.

Prof. Muthoni: “After 6 months, I knew this cannot work. I decided I would do it some other day, but as a business. From that time henceforth, I knew it’s going to be a business. Even if they pay half of the cost, let them pay it, then they’ll value it some more”

Narrator: In 2015, the product expanded to Mozambique and by 2017, it went fully commercial

Prof. Muthoni: “All this time, we were doing it in small bits, like 50 farmers. In Kenya, we had 200, Mozambique, 50, South Africa, 50. In 2017, we went fully commercial. So the real commercial ITIKI started in 2017”.

Narrator: Don’t be fooled by its simplicity. In the background, ITIKI is doing a lot of heavy lifting, using a neural network of AI algorithms to learn historical rainfall patterns so it can predict future rainfall with large-scale accuracy of about 98%.

But the farmers don’t need to know the technical details. In fact, to give them a sense of belonging and foster adoption, ITIKI involves them in the process.

Prof. Muthoni: “Even as we speak, every Friday we speak to the champions on the ground. They feel it’s theirs and we’re just a facilitator. So they observe their own indicators, they take pictures using their phones, they describe them the way they have done in the past, and when the forecasts come, they say ‘oh this is exactly what we gave you.’But in the background, we do use science tools to do the actual prediction”.

Narrator: And with the help of champions and field agents, ITIKI is able to yield even more precise predictions on a micro-level.

Prof. Muthoni: “Our farmers provide micro-level  to an accuracy of even 500 metres. You’ll find it’s raining here, where I am, and a kilometre from there, it’s not raining. So that gap, we fill that data gap using the indigenous knowledge and small handheld wireless sensor-based weather stations. So our model becomes highly accurate, compared to the national meteorological department ones ”

Narrator: From inception till date, ITIKI has received  seed funding from the host university, a $500,000 USAID fund in 2017, and other investments from the government of South Africa.

Today, the startup has over 13,000 paying users in the 3 African countries, over 70% of which are based in Kenya. Considering the income level of the target market, this is quite a feat. Prof. Muthoni attributes their success to being people-centric

Prof. Muthoni: “In Kenya, we are almost hands off the operation. So, it runs around the local people, they knew that person before, he was already helping with that aspect of farming. So we anchor ourselves around him or we go through the church, from which they’ve already been receiving seeds. So when you come in, you’re not imposing or disrupting what they’re used to. You are just saying, ‘you know what? In addition to all these things, you’re doing, you can also have this.’ 

In South Africa, we did the same. The farmers are already in a group, they’re running a climate mitigation project. So instead of disrupting the nature of things, we visited a guy who’s already working with them, he had their names. Essentially, we just use the bottom-up approach and it’s magical because people already buy it before you sell it to them”

Narrator: It also helps that ITIKI offers flexible airtime-based subscription plans, allowing for seasonal or installment payments of as low as 150KSH (less than $2) per planting season.

Of course, until they attain critical mass, this pricing model is not necessarily sustainable. Not to mention how capital intensive their customer acquisition model can be. In addition, farmers  within the same locality can decide to share SMSes, which will result in less revenue for ITIKI 

To address these challenges, Muthoni says they’re shifting focus from B2C to B2B. Small-scale farmers remain the focus but bulk payments from large groups is the aim.

The idea is to engage off-takers, in whose best interest it is for the small-scale farmers to do well; like insurance companies, banks that give farmers loans and even the government”.

Prof. Muthoni: “So these companies add a service to their customers and this service is ITIKI service. We have 2 customers that we are discussing with and things are looking very good”

Narrator: Prof. Muthoni is certain that the startup’s financial model is sustainable and it will take a more refined form as soon as an effective payment collection system is sorted out.

Prof. Muthoni: “We already know the most lucrative and big customer for us is the government. Because the government has interest in the small-scale farmers being self-sustaining because then you don’t have to rescue them when they go hungry.”

Narrator: Although the big picture is to cover the entirety of Africa, in the next 18 months, ITIKI has immediate plans for three other African countries: one in East Africa, one in Southern Central Africa (either Zambia or Zimbabwe), and one in West Africa.

As the ITIKI team seems to be prepared for the coming months, the hope is that beyond attracting revenue, it will continue to tackle the challenge that inspired the idea at inception. Just recently, the startup began expanding capabilities to include other predictions like locust invasions. 

They’re also looking to expand the product to include market prices so that farmers can know where to buy affordable farm inputs and where to sell their farm outputs at good prices.

Finally, Muthoni is confident that when smallholder farmers can maximise production by planting at the right time, they will be able to survive without depending on the government.

In the same vein, she believes the number of women represented in the market is also a plus that will help ITIKI with its focus.

Prof. Muthoni: “I think one of the things put out there is the fact that the small-scale farming sector is for women; they’re the ones tilling those small pieces of land. When we empower women, we are likely to change the face of Africa and that’s, for us, good. And especially their contribution to the continent’s GDP is strong.”

Thank you for listening to  Built In Africa.

This script was adapted by Muyiwa Matuluko

Research and interview by Oluwanifemi Kolawole

Sound design by Oghenekaro Obrutu

This is a production of Techpoint Africa

I am Oluwanifemi Kolawole

Please subscribe, share and drop a review of this podcast, by searching for ‘Built in Africa’ on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also email us feedback at [email protected].

For ad placements: [email protected]

For more stories on startups and innovation in Africa, please visit Techpoint.africa

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Narrator: In February 2018, while serving as the chief operating officer of a Lagos-based tech startup, Adeshina Adewunmi found that he struggled to maintain a work-life balance.

Adeshina Adewunmi: “My wife was actually ill and basically, I had to do all the grocery shopping. I had to also combine leading a tech startup.”

Narrator: To ease the pressure, Adeshina went in search of online grocery delivery platforms but, according to him, he couldn’t find any that could deliver to his part of Lagos within the same day.

Amidst all this, Adeshina observed the turbulence within the Nigerian eCommerce industry at the time. Most notably, Naspers, one of the most active tech investors in Africa, announced exiting Konga and OLX, its 2 biggest eCommerce plays in Nigeria, within the space of 3 days. None of the exits were under favourable conditions.

This got Adeshina thinking about the obstacles preventing eCommerce from taking off in Nigeria

Adeshina Adewunmi: “I started researching, alongside a few friends, to say ‘what can we do differently’? You know, Africa is very unique, copy and paste doesn’t work. You need to look at what works then readapt that model to fit our economy”

Narrator: On this episode of Built in Africa, we spotlight how Lagos-based eCommerce startup, One Kiosk Africa, is exploring the hyperlocal model to achieve sustainability in a struggling market.

In the course of his research, Adeshina examined how foreign companies, like US-based Instacart, operate a hyperlocal grocery delivery and pick-up service in over 5,000 cities.

Adeshina Adewunmi: “I stumbled on Instacart, stumbled on Cornershop, stumbled on some other few platforms and I said, ‘this is it’”

Narrator: Adeshina’s certainty stemmed from his previous experience running something similar, albeit unstructured, about 2 years earlier.

Adeshina Adewunmi: “Far back in 2016, I decided to leave the financial sector, whereby I was working with Stanbic IBTC, to start up and to pursue my passion which is business. I started out Home Tutors Nigeria and I was privileged to always visit some of our clients in the popular Eko Market. As you know, Eko Market is one of the biggest, busiest markets in Lagos.

Everytime I go in there, I see the opportunities. I see how people exchange value for money and I decided, ‘why don’t we leverage on existing platforms to help them scale more?’”

Narrator: He went around stores in the market, and began taking and uploading photos of on-demand items on online classifieds platforms like OLX and Jiji 

Adeshina Adewunmi: “I saw that averagely, in a week, I was making at least… you know, in sales volume… I was doing close to about ₦300,000 averagely”.

Narrator: That was in 2016. Three years later, in 2019, One Kiosk Africa was registered. Using a one-page site with Google Forms to gauge user feedback, the company launched its pilot, offering the stores the option to connect with buyers locally.

Adeshina Adewunmi: “And viola! With just food in the initial stage, we saw how the numbers rose and then we knew that, yes, it’s time to expand and to build on this niche market

Narrator: The value proposition? Hyperlocal proxy-shopping for busy people, with promised same-day delivery within 59 minutes.

Narrator: So how does One Kiosk Africa deliver on its promise?

Adeshina Adewunmi: “We programmed our system, especially if you are using the neighbourhood shopping flow on our web app, to be able to time the whole flow. So, if you place an order, it is expected that the merchant that you are placing an order from actually accepts your order within 10 minutes.

 This translates even up to the time that this stuff is picked up, and then it trickles down to the average time that it takes to deliver this to you. And because obviously we have trusted logistics partners, who are very efficient, averagely they do between 30 minutes to a cap of about 45 minutes, anywhere across Lagos, which is like where we started from in that sense.“

Narrator: In places like Ikeja, Lagos’ capital city, the eCommerce startup delivers products from popular stores like SPAR and ShopRite. However, its main focus is on the informal Brick and Mortar stores in these vicinities.

Food and grocery items top the list of One Kiosk Africa’s hyperlocal delivery. For the latter, cases exist where the items a customer wants are not accessible in grocery stores within that locality.  To address this, they designed a ‘market list’ feature.

Adeshina Adewunmi: “We have a market list via our Web App platform whereby you could just submit a list of all your groceries. We have a lot of top leaders who constantly use this platform for this because they trust us, obviously, to deliver.”

Narrator: Adeshina affirms that based on a survey the startup recently carried out, the market list service has saved users about 25% of their monthly spend, compared to if they went to the market themselves. In addition, over 4,000 paying users in Lagos make use of the hyperlocal shopping and market list services. According to Adeshina, the merchants listed on One Kiosk Africa exceed 14,000.

One Kiosk Africa runs a commission-based model with said merchants. For hyperlocal shopping, it earns 10% on any product ordered while collecting an average transaction fee of ₦2,750.00, about $7, for market list items.

Aware that the commission model might not suffice, the startup has plans to introduce a subscription model for merchants who wish to appear atop every region where they have a store.

With its current business model, One Kiosk has raked in over $200,000 in transactional value since July 2019. Additionally, Adeshina says when the startup ended its pilot phase in December, it declared a $3,000 profit before tax. This, he emphasises, is despite playing in an inherently loss-making market

Adeshina Adewunmi: “One of our unique selling points is the fact that we operate a zero-inventory eCommerce model. Everybody will agree with me, especially those that are very familiar with the eCommerce space, that logistics around warehousing, inventory management in terms of having personal stock, is one of those things that cause overhead. It is very cumbersome, especially whereby we do not even have adequate infrastructure to build or bridge that gap, here in Africa.

So basically, for us, we have told ourselves it’s going to be totally a zero-inventory model.”

Narrator: Like most startups, One Kiosk Africa started out self-funded. Not long after its pilot phase, it secured an angel investment from Niche Capital and Aptive Capital, a US-based VC firm where Adeshina is a partner.

According to him, there are plans to secure a funding round which will help scale across Lagos.

Just as important as funding in a startup’s journey is finding the right talent; one area the startup has found challenging.

Adeshina Adewunmi: “Getting extra-skilled tech hands to join our team in the initial phase was a bit tough, especially because we were very lean. So it was a bit of a challenge but we have a very strong founding team. I am basically sharing the vision, sharing our passion, sharing what we’ve been able to achieve over the last few months. And showing people where we are going has gradually helped them to embrace us; we are like one of the top go-tos for people to want to work with us right now. 

So we have experience cutting across those who have worked within the financial sector. We’ve also had a good representation in the retail space operations whereby even our CTO has been privileged to work in a bank and engage with a lot of MSMEs. I also, in the course of my working experience, have been privileged to work and engage directly with most of these MSMEs to understand their pain point, to understand how technology can actually improve their lives. Our COO comes with experience in operations, as well as also having a human touch; she’s very strong in human capacity development, so she’s able to coordinate end-to-end of the whole flow.”

Narrator: Onboarding popular stores has also proven difficult. According to Adeshina, when pitching to these stores, they prefer to digitise their sales channels rather than work with the startup. However, he believes that as long as users keep increasing they will come around.

The eCommerce market in Nigeria remains nascent but players like One Kiosk Africa continue to create a niche for themselves, in preparation for a ready market. Adeshina is confident that if they are able to engage informal retail players to adopt online models, they can win the mass market.

In bringing informal retail online, One Kiosk Africa also intends to help them connect to financial partners that can use their sales data to grant them access to credit for expansion.

In the immediate future, Adeshina looks to deepen One Kiosk Africa’s presence in Nigeria within the next 12 months. After that, the goal is to get into Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt over the next five years.

Thank you for listening to  Built In Africa.

This script was adapted by Muyiwa Matuluko

Research and interview by Heritage Kene-Okafor

Sound design by Oghenekaro Obrutu

This is a production of Techpoint Africa

I am Muyiwa Matuluko.

Please subscribe, share and drop a review of this podcast, by searching for ‘Built in Africa’ on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. 

For ad placements: [email protected]

Get up to 60% off on hosting, website builder and all purchases at HostGator.com.

For more stories on startups and innovation in Africa, please visit Techpoint.africa

Additional sound effects from https://www.zapsplat.com

Narrator: In this episode of Built in Africa podcast, we put the spotlight on how Akiddie looks to create the largest collection of African children’s stories using technology

If you grew up in Nigeria, you probably heard this familiar call and response phrase before a night time story

Voice actors: “Story story… story!”, ” Once upon a time… time time!”

Narrator: Before the 21st century, storytelling was an integral part of most Nigerian cultures. Children would gather around adults, most notably under the moonlight, to hear different tales and folklore, sometimes in their native tongue.

Stories about animals, the cunningness of the tortoise or brutality of the lion, for instance, would educate and entertain. Some of these stories would even change the way they approach the world, in terms of morals and values.

In recent times, however, this aspect of Nigeria’s cultural heritage has changed a lot. An example is how most youth living outside their places of origin can’t speak their native language.

For Dominic Onyekachi, a Nigerian fluent in Igbo and Hausa, two of Nigeria’s major languages, this is not much of a worry. He’s more perplexed by another issue.

Dominic Onyekachi: “My sister had asked me to read a story to my niece. I went through her mini library and I discovered something unnerving. Not only were the stories white and foreign, with predominantly white characters and plots – I felt that wasn’t representative of her, of course – the themes were outdated and probably outrightly sexist”. 

Narrator: That’s Dominic Onyekachi

Dominic Onyekachi: “It emphasised marriage as the ultimate achievement for women. You see that in stories like Cinderella, Rapunzel which tell girls that ‘you are a princess but the story isn’t about you. Your princessness has to be validated by a Prince Charming that comes to sweep you off your feet.’ 

I felt that was an outdated theme, most likely because those stories were written over 200 years ago.”

Narrator: Dominic clarifies that while he doesn’t have any issues with marriage, he feels Nigerian children should consume indigenous stories with more powerful narratives.

Dominic Onyekachi: “Gender equality, inclusion, SDGs, tolerance, tech, entrepreneurship, financial literacy. None of these were themes covered by the books that were available.”

Narrator: Beyond the dated themes, a large part of the stories African children read in schools are tales of different people or cultures. Indigenous tales are less frequently told, and now children know more about Zeus or Thor than Sango or Amadioha. 

After his experience with his niece, Dominic had an idea. 

Dominic Onyekachi: “I decided to write her children’s stories. I got my friend, Tolu to illustrate it. The books were an instant hit in our estate and around”

Narrator: That initial success birthed the company, Akiddie, which Dominic co-founded with his illustrator friend, Tolulope Wojuola and Fanan Dala, a long-time business partner with whom he had worked on a couple of projects as a student at Covenant University, Nigeria. 

Dominic Onyekachi: “I didn’t actually set out to build a tech startup. I had already tried a few ideas in tech before but, I didn’t know that this was going to be my next idea in building a tech startup.

Initially, what I just wanted to do was write better stories but, when we discovered that the stories had demand and people really liked the stories, we decided to bring in the tech into this to make it easy and democratised. To make it easy for children, no matter where they are, to be able to access these kinds of important stories we were creating.

Narrator: With Fanan Dala and Tolulope Wojuola taking technical and creative responsibilities, and Dominic as chief executive, Akiddie launched in January 2019.

To kickstart the project, the company got a small seed investment of $3,000 from Dominic’s sister which allowed them to create 20 books and their website.

Akiddie is an online collection of African children stories. The team writes, illustrates, and translates children’s picture books. All these stories, Dominic says, are indigenous and available in different local languages, covering themes from financial literacy and entrepreneurship to gender equality and inclusion.

Unlike traditional hardcopy publishers, Onyekachi believes Akiddie’s trump card is its digitisation, which makes them flexible. 

Dominic Onyekachi: “We offer more languages, books, and options for a fraction of their cost.”

Narrator: Since 2019, Akiddie had been in beta phase and remained free to users. However, in May 2020, they officially launched with a subscription model that restricts the number of books a user can access. And with ₦600 (about $1.30) per month, parents can sign up their children and have access to up to 20 books on the Akiddie platform.

But there’s a bit of a challenge. In Nigeria, subscription models are quite unsustainable and difficult to execute. It’s a challenge most content and media companies face when starting out.

Knowing this, Dominic stumbled on a problem that the startup could tackle and at the same time, help diversify its revenue.

Dominic Onyekachi: “I decided to include or co-opt schools into the platform. I messaged around 300 schools and out of that, we found out that only 7 of them had a library. So if you extrapolated from that data, less than 2% of schools in Africa or Nigeria have a library”

Narrator: With challenges ranging from inadequate space in school premises to little or no funding, it is not difficult to see why this is the case

They realised that Akiddie could serve as an online library of children’s books with these schools and children’s parents as off-takers. The books are available in English, French, Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba. Also, the platform has a feature that lets users view an illustrated story in 360 degrees as well as a data tracking feature.

Dominic Onyekachi: “And the math makes sense. For instance, Akiddie costs around ₦1,150 per month for schools. And if you subscribe for a month, you get access to a growing collection of 20 books. So, for a price less than the cost of one hardcopy book, you are able to access 20 books in 4 languages, 24/7. You don’t have to have a library or a librarian. I felt it was like a steal for schools and that is another problem we set out to solve”

Narrator: Dominic estimates that the platform will have up to 140 books by the second quarter of 2021.

So far, Akiddie has served over 1,000 users and on the B2B side, it has six schools as clients. According to Dominic, the revenue from these customers is more than ₦1,380,000 ($3,000).

Seeing as it officially launched in May, it seems like an impressive feat, one Akiddie hopes to build upon in the coming months despite the challenges brought by the coronavirus pandemic.

School recruitment is a bit slow because schools don’t want to commit funds to a new project during the pandemic. However, Dominic says they have commitments from more than 30 schools for the platform when schools reopen.

Besides charging a subscription fee to access its online books, Akiddie licenses characters from its books and consults on projects targeted towards children, from content creation to illustration. This content-as-a-service (CaaS) revenue model makes up 60% of Akiddie’s revenue.

The pre-seed money and revenue generated so far are what Akiddie has used to stay afloat. But it is actively looking for a seed round to scale, an activity that has come with some disappointments.

Dominic Onyekachi: “The biggest disappointment I had came in November 2019. We won ₦10m in funding at the Global Entrepreneurship Week, Abuja version, only for the organisers [laughs] to go on radio silence after the event. Never heard from them, never saw them” 

Narrator: Also, the startup has been in talks with two VCs but according to Dominic, nothing has been finalised due to the pandemic.

But it is not all bad news for Akiddie. The eighteen-month-old startup has enjoyed a fair share of success too.

It made slight changes to its business model in order to survive by writing proposals to some Nigerian banks. The end result? A partnership with FCMB to give 10,000 children access to the platform. If successful, this will be a part of the bank’s CSR efforts.

Additionally, Akiddie was recently selected as one of the startups to participate in the maiden Forbes digital accelerator boot camp.

For the startup’s plans going forward, Dominic shares two. Innovating around its current offerings, Akiddie wants to launch an eCommerce store which will feature toys and clothing of characters and events developed from its stories to sell to customers.

Also, the startup wants to infuse more technology into its digital storytelling platform.

Dominic Onyekachi: “Storytelling will always be at the core of what we do. We are going to utilise emerging technologies like VR and AR to make the experience more immersive for the user. We are definitely going to go into animation because there is a market for much more inclusive content for African children.”

Narrator: Dominic adds that he doesn’t believe the future of edtech is in replicating the classroom on the Internet. But in leveraging emerging tech and intricately designing storytelling to create a learning experience for children that is both addictive and enjoyable.

Dominic Onyekachi: “Think about finishing your curriculum in math while completing game levels on an AR set. The future of online learning is here and we are going to bring it to the children first.”

Thank you for listening to the Built In Africa Podcast.

This script was adapted by Muyiwa Matuluko

Research and interview by Heritage Kene-Okafor

Sound design by Oghenekaro Obrutu

This is a production of Techpoint Africa

I am Muyiwa Matuluko

Please subscribe, share, and drop a review of this podcast by searching for ‘Built In Africa’ on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please subscribe, share and drop a review of this podcast, by searching for ‘Built in Africa’ on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also email us feedback at [email protected]

For ad placements: [email protected].

For more stories on startups and innovation in Africa, please visit Techpoint.africa

Narrator: Growing up in rural Uganda, Daniel Emaasit and Tobias Tukei helped their parents operate their family warehouse and farm.

For more than 20 years they struggled to maintain constant income from their warehouse, due to how demand for storage of agricultural produce fluctuated. 

Male voice actor 1: “Our parents decided to focus more on farming than warehousing. This took a toll on their health. Our mom had a stroke at the farm and our dad developed chronic back pain. If our parents had focused more on warehousing, maybe their health would’ve been better,” 

[Narrator] Daniel laments

In this episode of Built In Africa Podcast, we’ll be taking a look at how Ugandan startup, Logistify AI, is helping businesses find flexible storage for their inventory.

Narrator: Driven by the warehouse challenge, the brothers were determined to find a solution to help their parents. After graduating from the university, Tobias went on to become a professional logistics and supply manager, working in different logistics companies in the space of six years. Daniel, on the other hand, is an AI researcher and PhD data scientist in the US.

During Tobias’ career in the logistics and supply chain management in Uganda, he noticed that many warehouse owners were looking to rent out their vacant spaces. At the same time, he received requests from shippers looking for storage space.

As a middleman, Tobias took the initiative and started matching warehouse owners and shippers. Being a ‘one-man’ team, he spent weeks negotiating contracts between any two parties. This led to a lot of back and forth that included emailing requirements, faxing invoices, and many phone conversations.

Male voice actor 2: “This was a pain. It would take a shipper weeks to get a final quote. Moreover, each warehouse would send me quotes with extremely varying prices and fees. There was no standardisation in pricing,” 

[Narrator] Tobias recalls.

Narrator: In July 2019, Daniel proposed that he and Tobias solve this problem. How? By creating a marketplace for warehouses in Africa so people could easily find and book them.

Three weeks later, the brothers had a minimum viable product (MVP).

Male voice actor 1: “We onboarded our parents’ warehouse first,” [Narrator] Daniel recalls enthusiastically. “Then Tobias reached out to his former clients and showed them the MVP. They were so excited because a tech solution could scale and was more efficient than relying on Tobias to be the middleman. We onboarded them immediately.”

Narrator: In August, with the help of Daniel’s friend, Cristian Arteaga, the brothers founded Logistify AI. Daniel acts as the startup’s CEO while Tobias and Cristian act as COO and CTO respectively.

Based in Uganda, Logistify AI is a marketplace of warehouses to help businesses find flexible storage for their inventory.

According to the CEO, the startup’s value proposition is to offer flexible warehousing at low prices for businesses of all sizes.  Also, the startup helps warehouse owners earn extra income from their vacant spaces.

The storage duration of Logistify’s warehouses is flexible as those looking to use them can book for a day, a month, several months, or even a year.

As the platform began to catch on, suppliers asked the startup to add an offering: a transportation service to move their inventory from warehouse to final customers. 

Male voice actor 1: “Suppliers begged us to provide transportation for their inventory. So we built a fulfilment product that provides pick, pack and shipping,” 

[Narrator] Daniel explains

Narrator: The logistics startup boasts of serving the largest fish-feed distributors in Africa. Egyptian-based Aqua Fish and Ugandan SON Fish are some of its biggest clients on the demand side. On the supply side, it has on-boarded large modern warehouses like Rafiki Property Services and East African Investments.

Logistify AI charges its warehouse partners a 5% service fee, while for suppliers in its marketplace, it stands at 10%. This has placed the startup’s gross merchandise value (GMV) at more than $10,000 and revenue at almost $3,000 within the last 18 months.

According to Tobias, the platform’s flexibility, low prices, easy invoicing, and transparency are the reasons their customers keep coming back. And in the past three months, these users have increased by 120% month-on-month, the COO says.

Having bootstrapped with savings of $20,000, Logistify AI is not profitable yet but Daniel believes it is only a matter of time.

Male voice actor 1: “We’re about to close more than 10 enterprise sales leads and there are 50 more enterprise sales leads after that in our pipeline. This will bring the company to profitability.”

Narrator: In Uganda, Daniel explains, the need for solutions like Logistify AI became more evident during the pandemic.

Male voice actor 1: “The warehousing and storage industry has not seen any technology revolution at all. Meanwhile, the behaviour of suppliers and retailers has evolved and there’s a growing number of suppliers needing “pop-up” storage space.”

Narrator: A Bloomberg article titled Uganda Has Nowhere to Store Tea as Virus Causes Stock to Pile Up seems to back up Daniel’s point. According to the article, Africa’s second-largest tea manufacturer struggled to find stores during the pandemic. Also, there have been other concerns in Uganda about the shortage of agricultural produce.

Sensing an opportunity, Logistify AI began helping suppliers of essential items such as food, soap, sanitisers, and other protective equipment to find warehouses this period.

While this looked like a brilliant business decision, the startup faced the same challenges it had always encountered. 

Tobias explains

Male voice actor 2: “One major challenge we’ve had is a distribution channel for offline customers. It’s challenging to reach out to the many warehouse owners who are not online. Some are located deep in our rural communities.

“To solve this, we’re partnering with local unions and associations, for example, the Uganda Tea Association (UTA), to reach some of their members who are offline,”

Narrator: In the long run, Logistify AI has plans to expand to other countries. Fellow East African countries like Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda remain the top priority.

Also, the company is making an effort to see that its customer base in both demand and supply sides is more robust. For the demand side, it hopes to serve businesses in eCommerce and retail. And for the supply end, 

Male voice actor 1: “Our customers will be anybody with vacant storage space like a garage, a shop, a depot, a residential house, or an outlet,” 

Thank you for listening to the Built In Africa podcast.

Besides the narrator, the voices you heard in this episode are simulated, and not of the Logistify AI founders.

This script was adapted by Muyiwa Matuluko

Research and interview by Heritage Kene-Okafor

Sound design by Oghenekaro Obrutu

This is a production of Techpoint Africa

I am Heritage Kene-Okafor

Please subscribe, share and drop a review of this podcast, by searching for ‘Built in Africa’ on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also email us feedback at [email protected]

For ad placements: [email protected].

For more stories on startups and innovation in Africa, please visit Techpoint.africa