Kurious K

This episode features Segun Adeyemi who built and exited Amplify payment to OneFi (Carbon) in March 2019. Segun started out as an investment banker with a career goal to become the Governor of the Central bank of Nigeria until he caught the tech bug. 

He recently served as the country Manager of Jumo in Nigeria which is a market leading banking as a service platform, enabling real-time access to funds at the lowest possible operating cost. Jumo was recently valued at $400 million, according to The Times. 

In this episode we discussed: 

Segun’s journey through MEST.

Starting out Amplify pay and building it to over 1000 merchants and doing over 2 Million USD recurring revenue before acquisition.

Banking as a service & financial services play for businesses. 

Importance of Bitcoin other exciting stuffs.

Check out Seguns's  Map of Fin-tech and its key players in Nigeria (2020)analysis here:  

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-happened-fintech-2020-key-highlights-nigeria-segun-adeyemi/

In this episode, 'the 20th Episode' we hosted Abake Adenle on the Show, She is the founder of AJALA Studios, a company that make tools that enable enterprises build voice automation experiences in African Language with initial focus on voice recognition (something like Siri or Alexa) and speech synthesis. Her company is currently working on Yoruba, Igbo Hausa and Swahili.

Before starting her company she has worked with Morgan Stanley as equity derivative strategist and had a very interesting educational background moving straight from undergrad to PhD.

In this episode we discussed her educational background

Career with Morgan Stanley

Starting out Ajala studios

Why she did not want to pursue Venture Capital funding

Artificial Intelligence and African Enterprises

Hiring and more

Check out Ajala website here: https://www.ajala.ai/

With over 44 million small businesses across the African Continent, access to credit for them has never been easy even though Small businesses has been referenced as the backbone of the economy and the key to growth in Africa in  many publications. There is still a lot of market friction that happens to make credit accessible to them. For these businesses to grow, create more jobs, they need access to capital that is affordable.

In this episode, my conversation with Timileyin, Co-founder of Guava credit  explores the opportunity in the B2B (Business to Business) credit market.

His experience building business in logistics and insurance.

Growth trajectory in the Fintech space and more

In this episode,  we explored the innovative ecosystem of Botswana where I  had a very cool conversation with two visionaries from Botswana building Ked- Liphi, an electrical technology company with an innovation division which focuses on creating practical everyday use inventions.

During the lock-down in 2020  they invented an Automatic Diagnostic Combo machine, that assists in rapid COVID-19 tracking, the machine is a combination of face recognition & thermal temperature scanning that has application across different industries including events and Immigration.

Before then they have invented other products including a Solar Backpack which was manufactured to help individuals to boost up lighting or gadget charging when there are power cuts. This innovation also help kids in rural areas and major cities across Africa to have functional backpacks were we know there is no predictable power supply

In this episode we discussed

The importance of building the hardware ecosystem in Africa

Funding 

Government receptiveness to homegrown technologies 

The future of Ked-Liphi and more 

Need more information? connect with the founders here; +267 75639143/+26772135676

Recommended Music: Buy Africa by Fela Kuti

https://music.apple.com/ng/album/buy-africa/595818514?i=595818642

Josh started building business as a teenager. In 2014 he founded Eazyhire which was venture backed then joined Mest Africa some years later as a Venture partner. He is currently working with United Nations as a consultant. 

In this Episode, we discussed  

How he started Eazyhire

Eazyhire Plagiarism story 

Funding in Nigeria Tech Ecosystem Nigeria Startup bill and more 

Resources:

Read more about Eazyhire Plagiarism story here: https://techpoint.africa/2016/03/10/eazyhire-vs-easyhire/

While studying in Ukraine, Sandra Bakare witnessed firsthand her friends being expelled from school. The reason? not because of bad behavior or bad grades nor broke parents. It was simply because the parents could not effectively send school fees from Nigeria to Ukraine. This is one of the issues of outward remittance in Nigeria which is also inhibiting trade and growth within the African continent.

In this episode I had a great conversation with Dr. Sandra Bakare who  is solving the problem with Brownpay which is a multi-currency crypto remittance platform that connects the African market to the rest of the world.

We discussed :

How she started 

Funding

Her other ventures

Future throttle event and her view on male dominated tech ecosystem and more 

This episode is dedicated to the International Day of Girl the Child celebrated on October 11 of every year as declared by United Nations with this year theme tagged

Digital generation'. Our generation'

In this episode we  explored how unpopular philosophical perception may actually be the key to unlocking the young African entrepreneurial spirit as opposed to running in a bottleneck popular framework of bringing ideas to fruition where a huge amount of money is needed. 

This episodes features Princewill Fidelis who is very passionate about African entrepreneurship, he has background in research, innovation,  control systems, turbines technology, and strategic planning. 

He is a  Nuclear Physicist with focus of his work on how energy can be produced efficiently reducing carbon footprint across the globe. He is an environmentalist and always looking for ways to put Africa on the map about conversation that revolves around climate change.

Ahmad has been building tech solution as far back as mid 2000's in Nigeria.  In 2010 he had his first acquisition and then moved his focus to building Gigalayer which is one of the biggest web hosting company in Nigeria with over 14,000 clients covering other countries in Africa.

Ahmad is a  full-stack developer with lots of passion for web technology & internet businesses. 

In this episode we discussed how he started Gigalayer

Lean Startup methodology

The Story behind his first acquisition 

His perspective on bootstrapping and fundraising and lot of other existing stuff.

Check out Gigalayer on https://gigalayer.com/

Nicolas Waern Invested in my startup back in 2014. Ever since we have been friends and it's awesome to have him on the show. Nicolas has a passion to make the world a better place for everyone.

In this episode, we discussed European stereotypes in investing in African Startups, issues around climate change, smart buildings and many more.

Abraham Iyiola is the Co-founder/CEO of CareerBuddy and Tamborin. He  had a very interesting career starting out as leading AIESEC International in Nigeria and later led Talent Management at Jumia Nigeria in the early days.

In this episode we discussed his foray into entrepreneurship.

How CareerBuddy is changing organization culture towards talents.

Tech talent in Nigeria and the pace the Nigeria tech ecosystem  is losing software developers to other countries.

How we can build a continuous pipeline of tech talent in Nigeria.

Funding and more 

Recommended Book; The world is Flat by Thomas Friedman