Improving the Inefficiencies of Traditional Trade in Africa Through a Technology-Driven Platform with Deepankar Rustagi

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Unlocking Africa podcast. I have lived and grown up in Nigeria, did my engineering, and worked in consulting and FMCG, and fell in love with FMCG. Everyone in the ecosystem benefits because our objective here is to ensure more goods move through the value chain.

[00:00:20] So the transaction we hit in the first year of launch in Omnipay is $100 million worth of transactions on a monthly basis, enable the existing traditional trade players to be digitized through our platforms.

[00:00:34] There is lots to come in e-commerce in Africa and really excited and motivated to see the next steps. Stay tuned as we bring you inspiring people who are unlocking Africa's economic potential. You're listening to the Unlocking Africa podcast with your host, Terser Adamu.

[00:00:55] Welcome to the Unlocking Africa podcast where we find amazing people who are doing amazing things to unlock Africa's economic potential. Today, we have Deepankar Rustagi who is founder and CEO of Omniretel,

[00:01:12] a unified consumer goods distribution platform that improves the inefficiencies of traditional trade through a technology-driven FMCG platform. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the podcast. Deepankar, how are you? I'm very well. Thanks a lot, Terser. I really appreciate you inviting me to the podcast.

[00:01:33] It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. How's everything going? The home and town is crazy but everything else is good. The year is picking up well, so excited and full of adrenaline. Oh, brilliant. It's great to hear that you've had a good start to the year.

[00:01:50] As always, I'd like you to please introduce yourself and tell us a bit more about Deepankar Rustagi. Sure. Indian by origin but have lived and grown up in Africa, mostly in Nigeria. I did my engineering and worked in consulting and FMCG and fell in love with FMCG.

[00:02:12] Saw how distribution of essential goods is done in developing countries and it's something which we never noticed as consumers, buying the biscuits, buying the products. We never noticed how much work goes inside bringing the products next to your house.

[00:02:31] So, yeah, really excited about how FMCG industry is structured. And then I did my first startup. It's called We Connect and then moved in 2017 to startup Omni-Redil. That's pretty much about me. Fantastic.

[00:02:49] As you mentioned, Indian by origin but lived in Africa most of your life, fell in love with FMCG, which I'm assuming is what brought you to founding Omni-Rita.

[00:03:00] So maybe we can go into a bit more detail regarding what was the specific inspiration behind creating the platform to improve the inefficiencies of traditional trade in Africa. Sure. While working in the FMCG industry, I realized I saw the challenges faced by the value chain,

[00:03:19] specifically the last mile retailers, how difficult it is for them to scale their business, how many things they have to do to ensure that business keeps running. And when you compare Apple to Apple to a similar retailer in a developed economy,

[00:03:35] their life has become much easier with the event of technology, how trade has modernized in other geographies. And I think that's what motivated myself and most of our senior team members who came from different diverse backgrounds

[00:03:51] to try and solve the problems in traditional trade in Nigeria starting from Nigeria. Fantastic. So you mentioned the inspiration was trying to solve some of the challenges that the last mile retailers would encounter.

[00:04:06] So who would you say benefits most from your platform? Is it the buyers, the suppliers or the consumers? I think that's something unique about our platform. It's a value chain platform. We instead of replacing any of the different stakeholders in the value chain,

[00:04:23] bring all the stakeholders on a single platform to create an ecosystem. And everyone in the ecosystem benefits because our motivation or our objective here is to ensure more goods move through the value chain.

[00:04:39] So if yesterday they were dealing in 100 million nara worth of goods every day, everyone across the value chain, if they deal in 120 or 150 million nara worth of goods, everyone is going to earn more.

[00:04:51] But our protagonist or our hero is the retailer who ensures consumers get their goods in the right quantities at all points of time. Brilliant. So you mentioned it's a value chain platform that creates an ecosystem that benefits everyone.

[00:05:09] So maybe you can touch on or explain the key features or products that Omnireta offers to benefit this ecosystem. Sure. And I would just explain the everyone and then go into explaining the ecosystem.

[00:05:25] So our ecosystem is built around the manufacturers, the distributors, the logistics providers and the retailers. These are key players who are responsible for the distribution of essential goods in the remote parts of the country to ensure everyone has access to diapers, sanitary pads, biscuits, milk formula, everything.

[00:05:49] And to support this ecosystem, the features we have built are under two different layers. The trade in FMCG is distributed into primary distribution, which is like moving the goods from the manufacturers to the distributors

[00:06:06] and the secondary distribution, which is taking the goods and distributing them to the smallest of retailers from the distributors. So we have a platform called Amplify, which services the distribution between manufacturers and distributors and a platform called Omnibiz, which functions between the last mile retailers and the distributors.

[00:06:30] This is what we have done. The key features of the platform are ensuring there is visibility of inventory at all times. So manufacturers can see what inventory is available in Kano, what inventory is available in Lagos, for which product and which products are going out of stock.

[00:06:47] And they can plan to ensure there is more orders or more inventory available so the trade doesn't go out of stock. There are payments to move goods efficiently. You have to ensure seamless payments and availability of working capital.

[00:07:04] So when there is inventory, there is a smooth process for ordering, but you don't have working capital and payments. It becomes an incomplete process. So we completed the circle by ensuring people can order. There is inventory to support that.

[00:07:17] There is logistics providers to deliver those goods and there is seamless ways to pay for it even if it requires working capital. These are the five different elements we brought together in the ecosystem to service the stakeholders.

[00:07:30] Thank you for that. So you've gone through the features of OmniRetail. Of OmniRetail, you have a platform which is Amplify and OmniBiz. In addition to this, you also have a platform which is OmniPay. So I believe in Q1 of 2023, you launched OmniPay. Is that correct?

[00:07:50] Q4 of 2022, it picked up in Q1 of 2023 with the deep monetization at its peak. Brilliant. So the platform OmniPay is an embedded finance platform. And I saw that you achieved, was it over $100 billion worth of transaction in its first few months of launching?

[00:08:10] So what specific features of OmniPay do you think facilitated its rapid adoption and success? So the transaction we hit in the first year of launch in OmniPay is $100 million worth of transactions on a monthly basis, accounting to adjust over a billion dollar annualized.

[00:08:29] And I think that's also a very significant volume for a platform which was trying to solve the payment problems at the bottom of the pyramid. So the biggest problem is the retailers, the last-mind retailers were not financially included.

[00:08:44] Majority of them either used their personal accounts or did not have a bank account to work with and with demonetization surprising them, it was a tough thing for them to continue to operate their business in the same way.

[00:08:57] So in OmniPay when a retailer comes on board, he gets to have a virtual account from some of the largest commercial banks without him having to step out of his shop. So he gets a bank account with GT Bank, with Access Bank,

[00:09:13] with some of the fintech providers like Paga, Moneypoint, etc. So 12 different accounts in a single place where he can seamlessly receive money from his customers with instant notifications and he can make payments to his suppliers.

[00:09:27] Based on the transactions that come through this platform, we build a credit worthiness for this retailer and enable him to get working capital loans to buy more products to equip his store efficiently. And that's what has become instrumental for them.

[00:09:46] This is why we got more and more retailers coming on board and the transaction scaling up. So how easy is it for the retailers to access their money from OmniPay? It's like every other wallet, you have to go in, you have your different bank accounts,

[00:10:01] you can ask anyone to transfer in and when you want to transfer out the money, you just have to go to the transfer page and put the bank account and the amount you want to transfer and you are done.

[00:10:12] The only thing that is required for you to start your virtual account building or your account building is you should have a bank verification number. Brilliant. So I guess that contributes to the credit worthiness in terms of the process, how you assess people through the platform?

[00:10:28] Absolutely. So credit worthiness is not just the BVN, it is also because every retailer has to do a certain number of transactions and in the process we get to know them better. We know what they are buying, we know where their stores are, we have done multiple deliveries.

[00:10:43] So in that process, we have known their identity, their location, their address and we also have their BVN enabling us to know them better. Brilliant. So how many users do you currently have on the platform or using the platform? We have a little over 65,000 retailers on the

[00:11:02] platform. And how do you go about advertising the products and services that you offer through the platform? Yeah, this is a very interesting one. The products and services that we offer are very specific to a segment. Like on our platform you can't buy fashion products or you

[00:11:21] can't buy carpets or electrical goods. We only supply essential goods. Basically the grocery store next to your house is the only person we are catering to. We don't do consumer sales

[00:11:34] through the platform. So we don't do a lot of PVN radio ads for people to understand. We do more of localized in-person trainings where we invite people to different cafeterias and eat trees and

[00:11:49] we train them on how they can procure their goods efficiently. We train the logistics providers of how their problems can be solved. So it's a very localized on-the-field training module and that's the toughest part about our business. It's not sales, it's education.

[00:12:06] I understand. Brilliant, brilliant. If we can take a few steps back, one of the points that you mentioned is that you were trying to address some of the challenges faced by last mile retailers which essentially will be retailers that fall

[00:12:23] within the informal sector. So how have you gone about digitizing the supply chain for retailers in the last mile? Has that been a challenge? So I would say in the last four years after COVID, after 2019, there has been this search

[00:12:43] of digitization whether you call it from improving efficiencies, whether you see it from a perspective of digital payments. So penetration use of internet for work has become a wide thing where people are banking online, creating their bank accounts, doing transactions online

[00:13:03] but also trying to send emails receiving WhatsApp for work. So retailers, distributors, logistics providers are also in that space who have been digitized, who have transactions, happening on a daily basis and to keep a track of their business and the transactions,

[00:13:25] they have upgraded themselves to smartphones and data and internet. And I think we found it easy for a certain level, a certain size of retailers who had technology to onboard them. And as we moved

[00:13:39] on, we realized more and more people are seeing the benefit and are joining the wave. Brilliant. So how do you believe Omni Retail's digitization of the supply chain has helped streamline, say, distribution processes from manufacturers to retailers?

[00:13:57] Great. So in a large country like Nigeria and other similar countries in sub-Saharan Africa, there is a challenge, a challenge of either scarcity of goods causing problems or too many goods available in one place, excessive goods in one place causing issues.

[00:14:18] Because majority of the supply chain was working in a closed loop and not seeing what happens in the entire system where the data visibility was not there, decision taking on who should buy

[00:14:30] goods, where should goods be supplied was very local. Let me give you an example. So a distributor who had money could place in order to a manufacturer and manufacturer doesn't see how much goods are already available in that area. He only sees, yes, he's a distributor and yes,

[00:14:49] he has enough money to back it and he supplies. But in this process, what happens is there could be a certain area where excess goods are stocked. And similarly, every manufacturer has a limited capacity. This could lead into another area getting less goods or lower amount of goods

[00:15:07] because of which there is scarcity or stock outs. This was one big gap not just between the manufacturer and the distributor, but in a similar way between the distributor and the retailer. And the same gap of demand and supply existed in logistics. Logistics providers were working

[00:15:24] with certain players where the prices were low and there was challenging with demand, but in certain places there were logistics providers who didn't have enough work to generate return on investment on their assets. So they were sitting idle. So we brought these

[00:15:42] different players and ensured there is visibility of what goods are being manufactured in what quantities by which manufacturers. So we can see in quantities how much milk is being produced. We can see in warehouses, total number of warehouses across the country which are storing milk.

[00:16:00] We can see where there is less amount of milk, where there is higher amount of milk. We can see who are, where we need more warehouses to stock the adequate quantities at least 15 days of stock

[00:16:11] of milk. We could also see where there is more logistics providers required for seamless movement because the cost charged by logistics providers is very high as there are less number of logistics providers. So having that visibility of the infrastructure across the chain

[00:16:29] is the efficiency that we have brought in in the value chain. So this has existed in the United States or in Europe because digitization happened much faster and modern trade contributed to a much larger segment of the overall business because the predominant trade in countries

[00:16:50] in Africa was traditional trade. That visibility was missing and a platform like ours is enabling get that visibility so better quality decisions, reducing stock outs and ensuring right supply chain can happen. So you mentioned digitization brought about transparency in the supply chains.

[00:17:08] So maybe we can look specifically at what measures does Omni retail take to address the potential challenges related specifically to infrastructure and connectivity in regions where traditional retail is predominant. I think this is a very important question. We are not a player

[00:17:29] that is competing with the traditional retail. So we actually work in areas where traditional retail is prominent and the idea is not to build a parallel digital trade. The idea is enable the existing traditional trade players to be digitized through our platforms. So I'm not

[00:17:50] sure if I answered, but the objective is not to replace the traditional trade but to digitize them. So we actually function, we identify areas where traditional trade is predominant. We identify players in each of those areas who are the first movers who understand the importance

[00:18:07] of efficiency and digitization. We work with them and prove the concept to all their peers in the same area. And similarly, more people in their vicinity adopt technology and scale their businesses. Reality is without the adoption of technology, the inefficiencies are increasing

[00:18:25] in traditional trade and their profitability goes down, making them well-relabeled to shutting down businesses and impacting employment and various other things at large. So from your perspective, what would you say are the key challenges faced by traditional

[00:18:41] retail in Africa? The key challenges faced by traditional trade is I think the lack of digitization is one, the lack of creditworthiness is another one because of which they don't have enough working capital to scale their businesses. Because of lack of digitization, they don't

[00:19:00] have visibility of their own data trends where they lose measurability and also lose the insights which can enable them to take better decisions and also not repeat some of the mistakes they have done in the previous years. Other than that, also not having a connected value chain,

[00:19:21] there is a mismatch between the supply and demand side of various different elements in the value chain, warehousing, logistics, fuel availability, support staff availability. All of this needs to be in a way where you can see that digitization, you can see the

[00:19:40] requirement and scale at which the business is operating. So I would say these are the top three things, digitization, credit, and finally value chain visibility. So if we look at it from your point of view, what are the main challenges that you faced

[00:19:57] in scaling Omni retail in the African market? Challenges we faced were the mindset challenges. When we started Omni retail, the mindset was e-commerce has come in to replace the traditional trade or e-commerce or digital trade will kill the existing trade and that mindset challenge

[00:20:21] was a large one, mindset of cannibalization. Rather there is so much learning the traditional trade, the players who've been doing this for decades have that no one can actually replace them. Their learnings are very valuable. So the challenge of transitioning from a mindset A

[00:20:41] that digitization would replace us, we are not a tech company, we can't be tech enabled. I think that was the challenge we faced but once we started seeing adoption by our first few

[00:20:53] first movers, we saw the trend of more and more people coming in and grabbing the opportunity to scale their business. Thank you for that. So if we stick on the theme of challenges, we know that you operate quite extensively within the Nigerian market

[00:21:11] and recently we've seen the fluctuation of fuel prices and the currency devaluation in Nigeria. What have you had to implement or adapt to ensure the resilience of your operations during these challenging times? Absolutely. Last one year has been really challenging,

[00:21:31] the devaluation in Nigeria, the challenges around demonetization, the challenges around fuel price increases and in some places unavailability of fuel consistently, the challenges around logistics providers. These have been immense and what we understood is bringing in

[00:21:52] efficiencies at all levels to face these challenges is important. So the challenges around the inflation or devaluation of the currency were faced by ensuring we have a decentralized business which is with all its expenses very localized to its area and everyone

[00:22:13] can look into the profitability, everyone in the value chain can work towards building the right scale to make it a profitable business. I think that was our strength which enabled us to grow. Similarly, being an asset-like company, we had the power to attract different sizes

[00:22:32] and different types of vehicles because we didn't own the vehicles. So making it a hybrid strategy in certain areas where large-size vehicles were required for heavy value, we brought in diesel in certain areas where smaller quantities could be delivered, we brought in petrol

[00:22:47] in certain areas, we brought in Ocadas and small bikes to make efficient deliveries. So that helped us to ensure the right value of deliveries are being done and there is a certain percentage logistics cost being paid rather than a fixed logistics cost and that also

[00:23:05] happened with decentralization because we like in a place like Lagos where other companies are working with a single warehouse, we work with 16 different warehousing partners giving us access to 30 different locations distributing efficiently across. Interesting. So you mentioned that

[00:23:23] you use a decentralized model and you are an asset-like company which is a unique model. So in your opinion, what do you think sets OmniRetail apart from other African e-commerce platforms?

[00:23:39] I think one of the major differences team and I had when we were setting to start up this business and the question which we asked ourselves was there are so many other e-commerce companies that already exist. There are B2C e-commerce companies, there are some B2B e-commerce

[00:23:56] companies. We were not the first ones to enter into the segment but we measured the challenges they were facing and we also had a good understanding of the FMCG market and the supply chain ecosystem. We understood that decentralization would be critical. So when

[00:24:12] you start operations in a developed economy where logistics is built for scale, where infrastructure like roads, vehicle infrastructure, fuel infrastructure is all well in place, you can have a centralized distribution system meaning you can have a

[00:24:32] 10,000, 20,000 square meter warehouse distributing for a city. But here we saw challenges like some days some roads are closed down because of maybe wear and tear or maintenance or something else. You needed to build and make each cluster, each population cluster in every city

[00:24:51] very independent and that's what we did differently from the other players. Instead of going about raising investment to create an asset layer parallel to traditional trade, we built a digital infrastructure of bringing all the physical asset providers

[00:25:08] onto a single platform and making a cluster by cluster ecosystem. So a cluster let's say Icarodu and others in Lagos is a different cluster from Lecky and others and these are two different clusters they don't overlap, they're far away from each other and independently

[00:25:25] each of the clusters can be scaled and all which was a different thing from some of the other B2B e-commerce providers on the continent. Thank you for that. So if we move from the

[00:25:37] offline to online, what are some of the unique features of Omni Retail's online platform that differentiated from other similar platforms in the market? I think with everything being online across the chain for Omni retail we had better visibility of planning and scaling processes.

[00:25:59] So this differentiated our operations, our processes, our execution from some of the other providers who had a similar ecosystem or who had their own warehousing, their own logistics, but had them offline and didn't have the visibility of how to scale them because the processes,

[00:26:20] individual processes of deliveries, individual processes of warehousing were not digitized. So they could not see how much inventory was required and if enough was available, they could not see if the deliveries were happening electronically and if the customer's

[00:26:35] satisfaction at the point of delivery was great. They couldn't receive the payment at the point of delivery, their loan applications were in person and in physical, which was what created the differentiation between them and us. So being online helped us with the

[00:26:49] data and the visibility to run through better processes. So you've detailed what differentiates you from your competitors. We know from numerous reports that only a small percentage of Africa's e-commerce startups are profitable. What do you believe you're doing differently that has made

[00:27:07] you profitable? I have answered some of the points in the previous questions, but the major differentiation in profitability of a startup is the mindset. Mindset of the team, mindset in building the processes. A large part of startups which we have interacted with, we've seen

[00:27:26] the mindset of the team and the management is startups are going to make losses for some time. Startups are not profitable. Startups don't become profitable in day one. Absolutely, we totally understand that profitability comes at scale but the difference in our mindset from day one was

[00:27:46] we should be clear if we are not making profits or if we are losing money, where exactly are we losing and how will this money be made? And that helped us build processes which were not competing against

[00:27:59] one another, which were not competing against building some vanity matrix. It was made to build better processes and I think that mindset is super critical because the entire venture ecosystem has changed their thought process and they want to invest in value creation

[00:28:18] rather than certain metrics. Thank you for sharing that. So with this profitability in the Nigerian market, do you have any expansion plans for the future? Do you have your eyes set on any specific new markets within Africa that you want to expand your service or platform

[00:28:37] to? Absolutely. So the interesting part is when we started, most of the investors were not clear that an asset-light ecosystem would have the right kind of control to offer great quality and build the right unit economics and everyone told us asset-light would be tough.

[00:28:57] But today when we have proven to ourselves and to our investors that we are in the right place with the right method to scale, we are excited to scale forward. We've already expanded to Ivory Coast and Ghana and we are open to expanding further. We're looking for partners

[00:29:15] on the manufacturing side. We're looking for partners who we will expand with and we are also open to working together with startups in other areas who are in the same space and feel we can create a bigger and better stronger vehicle to create a larger value set.

[00:29:33] Brilliant. Brilliant. So with this unique model that you've used to expand Omni retail, are you seeing similar models being used within the Nigerian markets or over African markets? I would say other similar models to ours, which are digitizing the ecosystem,

[00:29:56] are being used in various other places. We have seen similar players in Indonesia, in India, in Africa. We have seen a large number of the players who started with an asset-heavy approach have moved into an asset-light approach or a managed asset approach

[00:30:12] in the recent few months. But we didn't see a large number of players starting with an asset-light approach. But you've seen in other parallel markets, like not an FMCG but we've seen in infrastructure, in other B2B platforms for other categories, we've seen companies starting

[00:30:31] up who have a dissimilar approach and who have aspirations to scale in a big way. Interesting. So it's clear that the e-commerce landscape in Africa is evolving. So can you share some insights on the ever-evolving and challenging e-commerce landscape in Africa

[00:30:51] and how Omni retail fits into this landscape? I think the e-commerce landscape is a huge one. We've seen players like Jumiya who have been the long-standing players of the e-commerce space in Africa. We've seen various other players who have contributed significantly in

[00:31:12] upscaling the ecosystem of e-commerce and we've seen how they have transformed with how their marketplace models, with how their payment models and how their BNPL models have evolved. And I think this journey is a long-term journey. In digitizing the trade in Africa

[00:31:30] completely, there will be still more improvements, enhancements that will come to bring in efficiencies that can add value in the overall trade. And I think Omni retail is going to be instrumental

[00:31:44] in creating value at the base where if we digitize the primary and the secondary of the B2B which is ensuring more retailers have efficient products available, this would, I think this inspiration would be taken in other categories as well. There would be other categories digitized

[00:32:03] in similar ways and B2C commerce will evolve on this base in a new way, in a profitable way to take things forward. So I think there is lots to come in e-commerce in Africa and really

[00:32:16] excited and motivated to see the next steps. Brilliant. So with this evolution comes new trends. So what are some of the key trends and developments that you're seeing in say Nigeria's retail or e-commerce space that you're currently excited about?

[00:32:34] Some of the trends that I'm seeing is all stakeholders being involved in creating more value. So whether it's the manufacturer, whether it's the logistics providers, importers, distributors, everyone has understood with the challenges our economy has seen in 2023

[00:32:56] and is seeing in 2024. For us to distribute efficiently it's not a stakeholder's job, it is the job of the entire industry. And I think everyone is coming together to create value in the chain. And I think that when that happens, that's when long-term strong solutions

[00:33:19] are built and the entire category evolves. So some of the trends that we have seen is manufacturers getting exiting their own assets from logistics and enabling existing logistics providers by creating strong partnerships. We have seen manufacturers

[00:33:41] having incentives for their warehousing partners in strong ways. We've seen manufacturers providing incentive to the retailers for display of their product to ensure faster movement of goods through the value chain. These are some of the trends we have seen which we believe will

[00:34:00] take the essential good space in the right way and distribute efficiently. Awesome, awesome. So if we go from I guess current trends that we're seeing and look at the future of Africa, where do you see

[00:34:13] Africa's B2B e-commerce base? Where do you see it evolving to in the next five years time? I think one of the major changes I see in the next five years with digitization of commerce

[00:34:28] is the introduction of organized credit at the retail level. Because of the right trends and visibility of data in commerce, we would be able to offer credit at scale which is something that we have seen in various other markets when there is more credit available. There are

[00:34:51] improvements in purchase patterns, in consumption patterns and I think with the digitization of commerce, digitization of deliveries we see that happening in a big way. Thank you for sharing that. So if we look closer to home where do you see yourself in Omni retail in five years time?

[00:35:07] What role will you be playing in shaping the future of retail e-commerce in Africa? I think we're on the right track and in the next five years we would be a significant player

[00:35:21] in the essential good space, not just in Nigeria but in sub-saharan Africa working with both large scale indigenous brands enabling distribution not within the country but within different African countries. So we would be super excited to see products manufactured in Nigeria being distributed

[00:35:41] in Senegal through our digital ecosystem and products manufactured in Kenya being distributed in Nigeria. This would enable a stronger ecosystem and a deeper connectivity and strong economy within Africa and also enable African companies to be strong enough to export goods outside. So I think

[00:36:02] we would love to play a strong role in the growth of commerce in the next five years. And I look forward to seeing that happen. Quote of the week. As people we often have quotes mantras, proverbs or affirmations that keep us going when times are

[00:36:19] good or when times are challenging. Do you have one that you can share with us today? Absolutely I think I believe in persistence it's not about the first try it's about the

[00:36:33] numerous tries that you need to do to get it right and once you get it right you can continue to scale. So persistence is required in setting up anything that is stable and long term

[00:36:44] yes with your best shot over the longer period and you will get it right. As an entrepreneur yourself persistence is key to success so yes I guess it's something that you've had to put in place for the success of OmniRetail. So as we come to the end of

[00:37:03] today's conversation do you have any closing remarks? Final course or action for people who are interested in the work that you're doing or just interested in the e-commerce space in Africa in general. I'm happy to discuss and share and talk about partnerships if there is anyone in

[00:37:22] the essential good space on the African continent who wants to reach out please feel free. I'm very active on LinkedIn and would love to get your ideas or bounce off new partnerships suggestions. Brilliant and thank you for that Deep Anka it's clear that OmniRetail has successfully pioneered

[00:37:42] a solution that not only addresses the challenges of Africa's retail landscape but also a solution that will contribute to driving economic inclusion and growth so looking forward to seeing how AFRIN develops and grows over the coming years and it's been a pleasure having you

[00:38:01] on the podcast. Thank you Tercer it's been a pleasure thanks a lot for the amazing questions. Speak soon. Look forward to it take care. Thank you to everyone who has listened and stayed tuned to the podcast if you've enjoyed this episode please subscribe share or tell

[00:38:17] a friend about it you can also rate with yours in Apple podcast or wherever you download your podcast thank you and see you next week for the Unlocking Africa podcast.