Resilience, Creativity and Building Tech for Real Sectors: The Story of a Serial Entrepreneur Building in Africa with Onyeka Akumah

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Unlocking Africa podcast. I'm now taking the boat. I mean, how bad can it get? You see more investment going into the mobility space for businesses that are paying attention to their climate footprint.

[00:00:40] 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. Welcome to the Unlocking Africa podcast where we find inspirational people who are doing inspirational things to unlock Africa's economic potential.

[00:01:05] Today, we have another guest which is Onyeka Akumah, who is CEO and founder of Treeps, which is Africa's leading corporate mobility startup, operating in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda with five million customers served in the last four years. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the podcast Onyeka. How are you?

[00:01:30] I'm fine, Terser. Thanks a lot for having me. It's a pleasure. I'm excited to be here and thanks for what you're doing in the ecosystem. Truly, I appreciate the opportunity. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. And really appreciate you taking the time to join us today.

[00:01:44] Before we get started, tell us a bit more about Onyeka Akumah. Okay, so my name is Onyeka, Onyeka Akumah, and I am the Founder and CEO of Treeps. Prior to that, I've worked for a couple of businesses. I'm excited about building businesses in Africa.

[00:02:03] I'm excited about empowering entrepreneurs to learn from my lessons in the good times and in the bad times to create better businesses on the continent.

[00:02:13] I think I am just one guy who understands the use of technology and how that can be applied to getting customers to live a better life on the African continent.

[00:02:25] In the course of my career, I got out of school reading software engineering, but I decided to focus on how the customer used the technology as against building the technology itself.

[00:02:37] The combination of both when it comes to marketing and technology has allowed me to sit right in the center of understanding what customers want in the technologies or the businesses that I've created.

[00:02:50] I have been focused on real sectors in the course of my career, whether it's businesses I've built or those I've enabled orders to build. Within a short time, these sectors have included the real estate sector, the agriculture sector and most recently the transportation sector.

[00:03:11] So yeah, that's maybe just giving an idea of me. Fantastic. That's a great introduction into who you are and what you've done and what you plan to do in the future. As you mentioned, you're excited about building businesses in Africa and you understand the use of technology.

[00:03:28] So can you take us back to the moment you first realized the potential of technology to change lives specifically in Africa? So I think it started first in school.

[00:03:41] So something my mom told me very early on when I was 12, was finding the ways to create value for people using the skillsets I had.

[00:03:51] When I was 15, I wanted to get a computer and what happened was I decided to create web projects then, pretty much graphic design and artworks to get people excited about the value that I was presented to them.

[00:04:08] They bought these and decided to, I mean, I raised some money from that and bought my first computer. And then at time of 17, I learned how to put colors together on the computer.

[00:04:23] I learned how to type really fast and I just saw how people at that time didn't know much about using the computer and I had a skill set to use to create value for them. So I think that it started around that age.

[00:04:36] And then by the time I was in school, I also was creating websites for people. I created several websites. I created websites still to do PowerPoint presentations. I would rather do a website to do my, I'm doing the PowerPoint presentation.

[00:04:51] I created websites to present to people, to speak to people and I danced at building websites for companies in school. And by the time I was done my final year, I found myself generating enough revenue from the website designs I had done to pay my school fees. Wow.

[00:05:10] Yeah. Now, so I think if I started from me finding a way of creating value for people using my skill sets and tech with technology to then understanding that I could do use this to have impact on older sectors.

[00:05:27] By 2009, I was working in British Council there and I was the webmaster for British Council. And there was this particular event that happened where Felad Ruto came and spoke about the different sectors in the economy.

[00:05:40] Felad Ruto is an inspirational speaker in Nigeria and spoke about the different sectors in the economy that he talked about the needed innovation in.

[00:05:52] And at this time I was keen on agricultural transportation and real estate as those sectors that I wanted to pay attention to because I saw that not many people have done things in that space in Nigeria at the time.

[00:06:06] So I started researching more on those sectors, paying attention to them while working for Deloitte, British Council, GT Bank while working for those organizations. I was paying attention to these sectors to find how will I use technology to create value for people here.

[00:06:23] And I think that was where the spark came first. I had direction on the sectors that I wanted to focus on, but in addition to that, I knew that I had a skill set that will create value for people.

[00:06:35] But I needed to discover what exactly they would want. I didn't want to bring out a solution that people wouldn't really need. And I think that was where it all started. But in the meantime, I kept my day job.

[00:06:46] I kept my nine to five jobs and I worked for organizations until for about 10 years. I worked for several organizations including startups like Wakanao in 2010, Jumia. At the time it wasn't called Jumia. It's called Sabunta and Kasua.

[00:07:04] And I was like the first employee, Nigerian employee in Sabunta to help set up that business. And then I also did some work with TravelBeta where I helped to launch TravelBeta. I also built a startup in the marketing space and sold it to a media house in 2013.

[00:07:20] I did all these things, but my focus was still on agricultural, real estate and transportation as the sectors that I wanted to devote my knowledge and skill set in building from.

[00:07:30] So all these journeys I went through helped to build me in whether it's how to recruit people into teams, how to build a team, how to launch an idea, how to raise funding, how to structure a business to become revenue generating business.

[00:07:46] And by 2016, 10 years after I started working for several other organizations, I said it was time for me to then build my own businesses. So I think that was where the spark came from.

[00:07:58] It started maybe from creating value for people in school to leading to understanding the sectors that I wanted to pay attention to in 2009,

[00:08:06] to leading to understanding that each job I was doing was an opportunity to learn something new that was going to benefit me when I wanted to then build my own businesses. Amazing, amazing. Thank you for showing that.

[00:08:17] So you touched on a key or interesting part of your journey in terms of being the first Nigerian employee at Jamiro.

[00:08:25] So could you share some of the insights and terms of your journey from working independently in tech to actually becoming, I think was the director of marketing and partnership at Jamiro in Nigeria. And obviously Jamiro which then went on to become Africa's first unicorn and largest e-commerce store.

[00:08:46] Yes, it was I mean my journey to joining Jumiro at the time was an interesting one which I'll speak to. But I think what happened before that in 2009 while I was in British Council and I discovered the sectors I wanted to focus on,

[00:09:01] I also knew that I was pretty good at web design and online marketing and there were only three people on LinkedIn at that time. I joined LinkedIn in 2007. The only three people on LinkedIn at that time, they had their profiles saying they understood online or internet marketing.

[00:09:21] So I was one of those three from Nigeria. So it was easy for Deloitte to pick me out to say they wanted an e-marketing manager for Deloitte in West Africa and that got me a job through LinkedIn on Deloitte.

[00:09:34] And in Deloitte I managed 18 websites across six countries for them. I did that for a bit. The same thing happened again via LinkedIn that Wakanao through a recruiter they had in the UK, Rockpost,

[00:09:46] reached out to me and said they were looking for an online marketing manager for Wakanao. I mean at that time nobody knew Wakanao. So I started out the conversations with them. I then joined as employee number 15, came on board and built their online marketing campaigns.

[00:10:04] I understood it under an incredible internet marketing manager in the US who had worked on Obama's campaign at that time and went through a six-month study with him and indeed some amazing things in Wakanao. But I was two years into it.

[00:10:18] I then knew that I wanted to, in fashioning out who I wanted to be as an entrepreneur, I knew I wanted to become a chief marketing officer first before becoming a CEO.

[00:10:29] And in becoming a chief marketing officer, I felt like understanding internet marketing wasn't going to cut it for me. I needed to understand offline marketing and I needed to understand PR and how to engage the media. And I started looking for opportunities to do that in Wakanao.

[00:10:46] Unfortunately I couldn't get that. So I started looking for opportunities to do it outside of Wakanao. So I was researching the internet, LinkedIn again and then came across a company called Zandu in South Africa at that time.

[00:10:58] And they were building an e-commerce store for people in South Africa. So I reached out to them. Zandu was owned by Rocket Internet. I reached out to who I found was one of the major people in the company that was building that on LinkedIn.

[00:11:11] And I wrote to him and said, hey, my name is Onyeka. I am in Nigeria. I think there's an opportunity for Zandu to build an amazing e-commerce store in Nigeria. And I can show you some stats, I can show you some figures.

[00:11:25] I just said a bit on the LinkedIn app called I Didn't Expect a Response. But five hours later, I got a response from him. Hey Onyeka, we're in Nigeria already. We're trying to launch something. Can you come to Four Points Hotel and let's talk about it?

[00:11:39] I'm like, oh, fantastic. Okay. When do I come? And I say, oh, in two days time, let's meet. And for me, I didn't want to go to that meeting just going to talk to them about Onyeka, excited about doing something for them in Nigeria.

[00:11:54] I immediately created a website and I was pretty fast in creating websites. I could build a five page website with raw HTML code and JavaScript within 15 minutes. And so I created a website very quickly. I called it Divers and Blocks.

[00:12:08] And I put on that website a couple of fashion items, SKUs as we call it in e-commerce space. And then I did that because when I went for the meeting, I had a conversation with them. There were three guys. So Jeremy was one, Leo Stigler was the other.

[00:12:24] And I forgot to end the third person. And we're talking about the opportunity of e-commerce in the markets place in Nigeria and they were telling me how they wanted to, they had just put some things together. They're looking to recruit a team and all.

[00:12:35] And they said they wanted me on board. I said, okay, yeah, I'm excited. I want to come on board. But I already have an e-commerce store. And they were like, e-commerce store. We didn't know about this. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have an e-commerce store.

[00:12:48] I said, oh, what's the name? I said, oh, it's called Divers and Blocks. And like, oh, okay. And then I gave them to you. I said, oh, you can check it out. And they looked at it and they're like, oh, wow. Okay. We didn't know you had.

[00:13:00] I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. And what was the idea? I said, yeah, I don't know. part of that. I said, okay, okay. Maybe we're talking about you acquire my startup. I didn't even know what I was. I just pushed it out today. And I like your style.

[00:13:16] And they said to me, okay, so let's have a different conversation. We don't just want to ask employee maybe. I mean, because of the experience of building the business like that would you join us as a director instead? I said, okay.

[00:13:27] eventually accepted to become a director, not just a regular employee. And they wanted me to be the one responsible for registering the company and CAC getting the office. So the office we got at Leckiface 1 next to Lagoon, I was the one responsible for going

[00:13:42] ahead to when the monies were transferred to pay for the first office. And then on the documents, CAC documents, they needed in Nigeria. So my name was reused in registering the company in Nigeria. Then I found out that, oh, there was another arm called Kassua.

[00:13:57] Which they had done something similar with a couple of Nigerians. So at the end you had Rafael and you had Bungaho and you had Kendi. And then on this sub-unit side, you had Leo Stiegler myself.

[00:14:07] And so we started out from, and then there's only one of them in the common. And so what was I excited about? I said marketing, but I wanted to focus on offline marketing at this time. So it's always even good. They have an online marketing team in Germany.

[00:14:21] So I can focus on the offline marketing and partnerships. I'm like, okay, that's great. And that was exciting. But when it got to the package, I asked them so how much was it? And they offered me 60% of what I was earning in Wakanao.

[00:14:37] Now this time, I had things going for me that required responsibility of paying for stuff. And it was a major call for me. First, I had to go back to Wakanao and told them that, oh, I was taking on a new opportunity.

[00:14:53] They felt like it wasn't great for me. I should focus on these. They felt like I remember one of them saying, oh, there's a company called DL that are going to crush you and like I've heard. But I want to take this opportunity.

[00:15:04] How much are they paying you? We'll match it. I said, don't worry about the pay. I'm taking the opportunity. So how much are they paying you? I gave them one fictitious figure just to make sure they stayed off my back.

[00:15:14] And then I came back to my own constituents in my family and told them, see, I'm making this move. But I promise that within a year by God's grace, I will do what I need to do to make sure things are stabilized.

[00:15:24] I had some savings, but I'll do what I can do to stabilize. I took that opportunity. I took a 40% pay cut on my previous salary. I took that opportunity with them. And we started out from an apartment in 1004 Estate. And I remember- Amazing. Yeah.

[00:15:46] And I think that was how I just joined them. I remember three days later into it, Leo came to me and said, you either launch this business or you're fired three days in. I was like, which kind of talk that is this?

[00:15:58] Just left an amazing opportunity to call me a three-day star. This man is telling me if I don't launch this business, I'm fired. And I think that pushed me to then creating what is now known as the press statements for startups to have a press event.

[00:16:13] I had to think through that. I had 500,000 I had to use. I went to Bukobiri to rent the place. We launched it. And I told the press, come and see the new Alibabao Amazon of Nigeria's launch. And they came.

[00:16:24] I put a lot of press out and it took off. We created Buy Now Paylet where people buy things and they pay as they receive them. A lot of things happened and it was such an exciting experience with about 15 other internationals in the team.

[00:16:38] So I think that was how I joined. That was the story of me joining. And the exciting things that happened with me leading into joining the company. Eventually we merged Sabunta and Kasua to create Jumia. Yes. We picked that name and then we started driving with that.

[00:16:54] Amazing, amazing story. Thank you for sharing that. So I guess if we take a few steps back, you mentioned that you worked under an amazing manager at Jumia that was part of Obama's campaign team. What would you say is the most important lesson

[00:17:11] you learned from your experience at Jumia? So I think one of the exciting things I learned while working with the team was first they share audacity of a group of entrepreneurs that seemingly put fear at the backbone and decided they wanted to build something amazing

[00:17:32] and weren't afraid to start. That whole ability to think through stuff and run towards the finish line of kicking off a business with you overcoming the fear of what if it feels, what if it doesn't feel, what if we raise money, what if...

[00:17:48] I mean, we started Sabunta with 12 million error. We started Sabunta with 12 million error. Out of that, more than 80% of that went into getting an office space and putting a lot of things in place. That was why my budget initially to launch the business was 500,000 error.

[00:18:05] And within a three-month period, we had raised 80 million and then 800 million. It just kept on going. I mean, it changed from Naira to dollars and raised a lot of money. I think the sheer audacity of being able to think through an idea and have the confidence to say,

[00:18:22] I want to launch, I want to try, I want to put my hands out there, irrespective of the noise, irrespective of the economy. I want to give this thing a shot. I think that was one lesson I found amazing. The second was the ability to scale

[00:18:38] the speed at which we went that was unbelievable. I had never seen anything like that, the aggressiveness in the team. And good thing there were a lot of young people here. Everyone was just fired up and excited about moving really, really fast. And that whole ability to...

[00:18:56] And the team that supported the scaling of the business. I think that was something phenomenal I also saw and learned from. And in doing that, while keeping your eyes focused on the macro economy, so keep your eyes focused on what really makes the business tangible

[00:19:14] while scaling your keep your eyes on revenue. But just scaling and just moving really fast. I think that was something I found exciting and amazing while at Jumia or even at Wakanau. The third thing I learned was I could see that when you find an interesting opportunity,

[00:19:32] investors will be excited about investing in it. Especially if you're able to show traction, revenue, great customer service. Investors are always excited about this. And so I was fascinated by the fact that they could raise so much money from investors. And I was seeing it firsthand.

[00:19:51] This was the Rocket Internet team on the ability to scale, on the ability to launch, on the ability to attract the best talents in the market. Those were things I saw that excited a lot of investors that invested in them very early on.

[00:20:06] And then the last thing I'll say is you cannot succeed without a structure. A structure needs people and people, not just anyone, but really smart, exciting people. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room as a leader.

[00:20:20] And that's why today I've learned, I mean, prior to that, I would build business. I want to be the almighty of the business. I want to know everything. Today, I build businesses with teams. I want people that have complementary skills.

[00:20:33] And I think that was where I learned some of those lessons from getting smarter people in the room who are smarter in the area and they all contribute to make an exciting business around what you're building. Brilliant. So would you say the audacity and the aggressiveness

[00:20:49] that you witnessed during your time at Jimeer is something that you've taken forward in other businesses that you've worked at or launched? Yes, absolutely. I've learned how to not be scared to try things in sectors. I mean, I got into the agriculture sector.

[00:21:05] I had no knowledge of agriculture. I got into the real estate sector. I had no knowledge. I got into the transportation sector. I had no knowledge. But I'm one person that I'm a voracious reader. I'm a voracious learner. I want to learn. I pay attention to the sector.

[00:21:20] I listen within a year. I would gather enough knowledge that somebody may have taken 10 to 15 years to gather because I want to know everything about the sector. And so that audacity to go into a sector, as long as you're passionate and you're driven about creating value there,

[00:21:38] that helped me and that helped me in all the businesses that I eventually did. The ability to also scale. I mean, times have changed today. You have a lot of things that have affected how businesses can scale that fast and grow. Today I'm no longer at a place

[00:21:55] where I want to just keep scaling. I'm at a place where I want to consolidate on my position. I want to grow the revenue I'm generating. I mean, growing with your revenue is golden right now. And I'm excited that the selling decisions I've made

[00:22:10] in the last two to three years that today the businesses that I'm running are benefiting from it. I have two startups that are self-sustaining running on their revenues generated as against growing so, so fast. And so eventually they will scale but it will scale at their own terms.

[00:22:26] They will scale with their own money. I think that's something exciting. But then it was about raising funding and pumping it into marketing, bringing on the right people. So those are things I think I took on to my businesses and they helped at that time.

[00:22:40] But I think with times changing, one has to adapt to what the economy is like right now. Very, very wise words. So shortly after your time in Jamiah, you've joined Konga, vice president of marketing for those who don't know. Konga is Nigeria's biggest online store.

[00:22:58] So how did that opportunity come about? Okay, so I left Jamiah just after the series A round was released. And I took a consulting role at Darnity Trust Bank within a four months period and helped them launch the social banking app,

[00:23:16] helped them grow their GT Bank mobile app users from 5,000 users to 50,000 users within a one month period, helped launch the SME marketplace. And so these were things I did all within four months with them. And I was leading the online marketing team. It was an exciting period there.

[00:23:37] So I was doing that in Darnity Trust Bank and then one day I got a call from Simshakaia, the founder of Konga, who wanted me to come around and wanted to have a chat. I went to the office in Lukmeju then

[00:23:50] and we talked through and then later on, I think we went to the warehouse. I saw the warehouse and came back to the office. And he talked about how he was passionate about building an e-commerce store that was gonna rival everyone else

[00:24:03] and become the dominant store in Nigeria. And he sold that vision to me and I bought into it. And so I went back to a GTB and decided to wind down my time there with them and Sim eventually made an offer for me

[00:24:18] to build a marketing team from scratch in Konga. By the time I joined them, I saw there were two other individuals, Gabe and Larry who were two other individuals that were in the team. And so he wanted me to build that team from scratch number one.

[00:24:31] In two years, he wanted me to overtake Jumi in terms of sales and revenue. And I was like, okay, I mean, I always love competition. It's one thing that drives me. So like tell me you wanna be number one. Tell me if you wanna be number one

[00:24:46] in any sector call me, I'll make you number one. So just call my name. So when he gave this to me, I was like, fantastic. I mean, I've done it in Wakanao. I've done it in Jumi, I've done it in GTB.

[00:24:57] So there was this opportunity to do that. And he was also gonna back me up with enough funds to go after that number one position. Then there was also an added bonus. He said to me that there was serious doubt

[00:25:12] that anyone from Nigeria would eventually get this done. I was like, ha ha, this is my opportunity to share with everyone that we are smart. We are good, we know our work here. So I had two years to do that. I went about recruiting an amazing team.

[00:25:29] It was one of the best teams I worked with. One that was Ifai, Abraham, where I was, Evans, where I was, John, Kazim, YCD. I recruited from Google. I recruited from Eskimi at that time. I recruited from all over the place. Ifai, for instance, joined me,

[00:25:47] wrote an interesting article about this senior executive that had left from Jumiya to join Konga. And the way he wrote the article, not many people were happy about it. So I reached out to him and told him, you're a brilliant article,

[00:26:00] but please, I need you to bring the story down. I don't know you before, but if you do, I will really appreciate it. He went ahead and brought the story down because it was creating a lot of issues. I was the first senior executive

[00:26:10] that moved across boats from Jumiya to Konga. Yes. So he did. I then invited him over to the office. I said, see, I like the way you wrote that story, but if you're excited about it, I want you to write more stories,

[00:26:22] but this time around, write it for us in Konga. And then I negotiated a deal with him and he came on board. I mean, that was how I went about recruiting. Just show you're really good. I'll go out to get you.

[00:26:32] Some of the people I got also came from the previous places I worked. So that was how he joined. And then we, with that mandate to make Konga really succeed, we did a lot of work. Some of the things we did in Konga,

[00:26:46] I could easily predict what Jumiya was going to do next because the scripts they were still using at this time were some of the things I had put in as strategies for what they should do next.

[00:26:55] So I knew, oh, they're gonna do this in the next one month. Oh, they're gonna do this next month. So I go ahead of that and do it with Konga. And it was just an exciting time of just going, I mean, that competition

[00:27:06] and it was helping the two platforms grow. But I think the guys that were benefiting from it were all the advertisers that were taking advertising money from us and they kept on pumping the whole place. And we see what you're doing. And then, so that was good.

[00:27:22] But around July, we decided we're gonna launch Black Friday sales in Nigeria. And across the marketing team, we came up with a name, I think Kazim was the one that came up with the name. We called it Foyakata Sales.

[00:27:37] We're gonna do it on Black Friday sales day in November. That was the first maybe Black Friday sales ever seen in Nigeria. So we called it Foyakata Sales. And we planned for it, we planned so much for that day. We put a lot of work into it.

[00:27:54] And on that day, we had an amazing success. That day, we overtook Jumiya literally. And in sales and in everything, we did about half a billion error in sales in a space of 72 hours. Our website crashed five times. They kept on increasing the bandwidth.

[00:28:12] So what we did was we took a PlayStation 3 and maybe it was going for 150,000. I can't remember. But we're selling it for maybe like 30,000. But it's the fastest finger that comes to the site, our picket. And we had, we didn't tell people we had only maybe 10 units.

[00:28:27] We took the Phantom, I think it was a techno Phantom phone and it was going for 60,000. But we're putting it on our website for about 15,000 error. But everything was going to happen on Black Friday sales day. But what we then did was underneath this two exciting sales,

[00:28:44] which had the Phantom phone had 20 pieces. The PlayStation 3 had 10 pieces. We put all the items and we had smaller discounts on them. But we put them inside that Black Friday sales page. So people crashed the site to want to get the Phantom phone,

[00:29:05] the techno Phantom phone or the PlayStation. And eventually it sold out. So because of that traffic, it was insane traffic. It was unbelievable. We excited the site will crash. We'll get it back up. The engineers were panicking. Everyone was just, it was just an amazing thing.

[00:29:20] But what happened was people then bought other items and eventually we did about half a billion Naira in sales within 272 hours. So it was a very great time. And I think that was one of the biggest things we did at that time

[00:29:32] before I eventually moved on from there. So moving from Jamiah to Konga, did that create any issues for yourself? You know, it's almost like moving from Liverpool to Man United. Were there any kind of friction or issues? Well, Michael Owen moved from Liverpool to Man United. Although...

[00:29:55] Yeah, so... It's very true. I think the thing was when I joined Jamiah, I didn't really have any non-compete agreement that I signed at that time. I mean, organizations now are smart about this. They put a lot of non-compete. They put a lot of documents you signed

[00:30:12] that won't let you jump ship like that. But I didn't have anything in that regard. And then also I didn't necessarily move straight from Jamiah to Konga. I had gone to GT Bank and worked for them for a couple of months before I eventually got into Konga.

[00:30:28] Almost like Michael Owen going to Newcastle in between. Newcastle initially, yes. I didn't want to miss it. Yeah, they're doing some time there before if I eventually land in that Man United. Yes. Yeah. So when I left, I didn't leave Jamiah with the mindset

[00:30:42] that, hey, I'm going to go to your competition and come after you. No. I left on the note and it's something I tell a lot of people that are walking organizations. You want to leave without breaking the door. You don't want to smash that one.

[00:30:56] Just remove the hinges and it's like to help everybody. Oh, sorry. Just everybody. I have nothing else to do again with you on this planet. I always want to make sure I have a relationship with places I've walked in. So it's not just my walk I did there.

[00:31:10] It's that I built relationship capital with the people that I worked with. So I eventually left and then by the time I joined Konga, even after I joined Konga and this has happened in many other organizations that have done this.

[00:31:23] When I left Wakano and then helped to launch Travel Better and it created that whole fiction of, hey, you're joining the competition to compete against us. I found myself in a position where the friendship I created with these individuals in the previous places helps me with relationship capital

[00:31:40] for them to understand why I'm doing something else that may be competing with them. In the true sense of the word, I'm not necessarily doing this to detriment their work and it's maybe in building the entire ecosystem.

[00:31:53] So I didn't really have those issues moving from Jumiya to Konga and I still had good friends in Jumiya, even up to today that I have good relations. Some of them were colleagues, some of them were maybe my bosses and today we're still good friends.

[00:32:11] They invite me for events and I mean, I've met Leo several times. We've had a lot of engagements afterwards. So I think it was about the relationship I created with them that allowed me to transition without having that kind of friction.

[00:32:23] The only issue was when that article was written about me and I asked if I had to bring it down and he obliged. I think that was the only thing that created some heat but after that, I think it was okay

[00:32:38] and I always want to leave without removing the dose when I'm leaving the organization. So it's clear that you have a knack for building relationships and also spotting talent and potential in people. How important has that been in your career so far? Oh, Tesla has been amazing.

[00:32:58] Relationship capital in starting any business is even more important than funding. I tell people this every time. I've had the opportunity to build businesses from relationship capital to get them off the ground initially and this relationship capital will come from,

[00:33:17] I may have done something for someone 10 years ago and all of a sudden I had the opportunity to do something new and I can call in on that favor or they would even just come to me and say, hey, I see you're doing this.

[00:33:28] I want to support you with this. This has gone from my peers to those who have, I've had co-founders in my businesses who reported to me in previous organizations or who were working in other departments and were junior to me in those organizations

[00:33:46] and today they are my co-founders. I've had employees who have worked in my organizations that have gone on to build or work for venture firms and have invested in my own businesses. I have invested in my own employees' businesses and supported their growth into building all their businesses.

[00:34:04] I have seen relationship capital work for me across so many places where money can get me the value I want. I see relationships and that's why I tell people to be careful. The opportunity you have working in organizations is giving you the leverage to build a network

[00:34:22] that would potentially help you in the future with whether you're building your business or you're creating a new value or you're working within an organization. I never take for granted the opportunity of working with people and leaving a positive impact on them.

[00:34:39] So to everyone that knows me and has worked with me, I know it's not 100%, but at least I can say maybe 80% of people that have worked with me will recognize the fact that I always supportive when they are working with me.

[00:34:53] I try to make sure I treat people with respect, whether you're a gate man or your general manager. I make sure people understand that somebody asked me the other day, what is your number one suckable offense? I said it's when an individual disrespects another person,

[00:35:07] whether it's the junior staff disrespecting the senior staff or senior staff disrespecting the junior staff. I don't tolerate that. I want people to treat people with respect. I know it's work that has brought us all together, but there's also that place for respecting the things

[00:35:22] the person is doing. And if we both have come into an organization to bring our complementary skills and values, it comes with all our baggages. It comes with all the things that makes us unique. And so let's respect that as we deliver on the work we're doing.

[00:35:35] So I think it's been an amazing relationship. Capital has helped me in every single business I've done till today. And I find it even more valuable than funding when you're starting off a business. So you've emphasized that relationship capital is important for building businesses.

[00:35:53] So let's talk specifically about the businesses you've launched and built, starting with Farm Crowdy. What was the inspiration behind Farm Crowdy? So in those three sectors that I paid attention to, I kind of sized them up and found out that for transportation,

[00:36:12] at the time when I was, this was 2015, at the time when I was looking at doing something in transportation space, you already had the likes of Uber. And I felt like if I was gonna do something in that space, it had to be unique.

[00:36:25] It had to stand out on its own. So I put transportation as wanting our look at later. I looked at the real estate space. There were a lot of prop tech platforms that classifies, they're called themselves prop tech platforms.

[00:36:41] And there's so much talk around that at that time. So I felt that was necessary. I wasn't ready to think of what to do there. And I was hoping that the opportunity would come in the future. But agricultural in 2015 was a big conversation

[00:36:57] where the Nigerians in general were talking about doing a lot in the agriculture space. Everybody wanted to do something in the agriculture space and there was something, it was one of those sectors that I paid attention to. So I then said,

[00:37:12] I went for a particular event in October of 2015 in Abuja, at the Abuja Chamber of Commerce. It happened and I spoke in that event. And then one of the organizers of the event, Professor Adesuba, walked up to me and said he had a Chinese friend

[00:37:31] who had come from China and he wanted to talk to me. He felt like I was pretty savvy with the things I was saying on stage and he wanted to just share some ideas with me. Next day we met in Sheraton Hotel

[00:37:42] and he was telling me about a couple of businesses in China that had created different platforms and among the three platforms, one of the platforms he showed me was a company that had created a crowdfunding platform for ship farming.

[00:38:02] So what they did was the people who buy ships and this ship will be wooed and as they woo the ship, they are making money and the ship just continues to be wooed over time and they're making money from it.

[00:38:15] So he said that was a platform they had. I was like, oh interesting. So he just packed something in the mail. What if, because at this time Professor Adesuba had a cassava farm and I said to him, what if I got people to bring monies to you

[00:38:30] to invest in your cassava farm and then as you get your proceeds every year, once a year, you're paying them and then it gives you the capital. Professor Adesuba was pushing secret on the side. He was like, oh yeah, anything you want to do,

[00:38:43] just let me share with that. That's why he gave me a problem. I like his style. And I was like, okay, I've got to you, no problem. Thank you very much. So I then focused on the Chinese guy. I said, what's that? You give me your cassava farm.

[00:38:56] He said yes. And so two months later I met this same Chinese guy. He said he was visiting Ghana. I couldn't come to Nigeria. I went there and then showed him a plan around how I wanted to get people to invest in the cassava farm.

[00:39:09] And he advised me on how to go about it based on what he was seeing on that sheep farm in China. January, I then decided that it was something I wanted to do and called a friend of mine, Ifai'in, not the Ifai'in from Konganada, Ifai'in

[00:39:26] and told him that this was something I was excited about. We started putting up plans around it. He said, okay, he was going to get two or three of his friends who had gone into poultry farming in Unilag. He went to Unilag.

[00:39:41] So he said he was going to get them on board. They came, we had a meeting in Oriental Hotel. This was January of 2016. And I understood what their challenges were. And then he said, all in it was 400,000. I'm like, what? 400,000, I would be able to raise 2,000 birds

[00:39:58] into full grown birds and then you sell them when you make money and we can, on the proceeds, we can share the profit. And I was like, oh, okay. So we started talking through that and I was learning more and I started researching more.

[00:40:10] So February of 2016, I knew that I wanted to launch a platform that would get people to invest in farmers who needed money. And if they are farmers that is just 400,000, I already needed to grow their business. I felt like there was an opportunity to do that.

[00:40:25] So I started watching on who I was going to bring to the team. I reached out to a friend of mine who was, I knew that there was financing involved. So I knew somebody that understood finances to come on board.

[00:40:34] And I reached out to a friend who came on board and Markine Delay who I wanted him to bring an account and he said he wanted to join. He came on board. I reached out to another friend of mine and this is a relationship capital pretty much.

[00:40:46] Who was doing stuff with technology but he had consistently worked with me in all my platforms to build the back end of technology while I build the front end. His name was at that time Jim Omayegu. But he's now known as Christopher.

[00:41:00] And I reached out to him and told him to come on board. He came on board. He told me, Oyeka, if it's your business, whatever it is you're doing, I'm with you. And so that's how that form and team was formed.

[00:41:09] But we needed somebody in the aggregate space. So in May, I attended a conference. I saw this farmer who was speaking very eloquently about agriculture and said he had about 20 years experience. His name is African farmer Mugachi. Reached out to him, got introduced to him,

[00:41:24] had conversations with him. He came on board. In July of that year, on June of that year, we came up with the name Farm Crowd. They bring in a crowd of people to farm. And the idea was that we weren't going to go into the farm

[00:41:36] and we're just gonna focus on raising the money for people, for the farmers, giving them money, monitoring them as they go through their work and they pay people back. But in July, we discovered that we couldn't just do that from a financial perspective.

[00:41:50] We started looking at the part where we needed to be the farmers ourselves. So we brought on another person this time around, Bronon Temitope and Motolani to join us in the team, along with African farmer to handle the operations on the farm. I started saving 50% of my salary.

[00:42:08] At that time, I was working in TravelBetter. I started saving 50% of my salary in February to use that as initial capital to get the business running. So by September, we then launched and went live. And pretty much the idea was to get people to invest in these farmers.

[00:42:24] But now we were going to monitor the farms and possibly even be the farmers ourselves. I started going to Ibadon to meet the first set of farmers, poultry farmers. I said, traveling, it allowed me travel to more than 17 states about a combination of about 30 cities.

[00:42:43] And then we started working with several farmers and getting them on board. We worked on about 5,000 hectares. That's about 15,000 acres of farmland across three states for maize, for rice. And I think it just grew from that particular position. So that was how we started it.

[00:43:02] Eventually there were changes to the founding team. Some people left and some people stayed on. But we were able to build a business out of just raising money for people and then investing in the farmers. But God, there were so many lessons we then learned in the journey.

[00:43:17] I can imagine. Because I think it's quite clear what the opportunities and potential were for farmcrawdy. What would you say were the main challenges that you faced or lessons learned during that period? There was so much. It was in five years of running that,

[00:43:37] it was such an interesting process. One was you had things around. So let's say you raise money. You raise money from people and then you invest in the farmer. The first poultry farm they started with, she was raising 500 birds. This lady raised those birds. So it was broiler.

[00:43:59] So she raised those birds for us to sell those birds four months later. She raised those birds well with pushing her to make sure the birds were big, big, big. Make them big. You know how you would say, you go to the market

[00:44:11] and Nigeria, they're weighing the chicken. And like, this is heavy. So we wanted it to be heavy. We didn't know that if you were going into commercial poultry farming, there was a weight size of 1.5, 1.8 kg that will get you to that scale.

[00:44:28] But instead we were telling her to push it to 3.5, 4 kgs. 4 kgs my mom had taken the farm and said, this is the one she would pay money for. So she raised these birds. First problem, when we were transporting the birds

[00:44:40] from the farm to Lagos from Ibadu, the truck broke down. We lost 300 of the birds. And like, which kind of problem is this? It caused so much problems for us. We had taken money from people to invest in this farm. And now 300 birds were gone.

[00:44:57] We couldn't even tell the lady because she would have been heartbroken. And that first issue presented the challenge of, see you need insurance. OK, so we started working on how do you put insurance in place? We started working on insurance companies to start creating insurance packages for this.

[00:45:13] There were problems around that. There were problems around you invest in farmers. And then the farmers will tell you they thought that the money you give them was grant. But like, it's not grant. You're supposed to do the work on the farm,

[00:45:27] give us the proceeds to sell, and we pay the people back. And what is happening? We started having issues with some farmers and some associative farmers. And then we had issues where the farmers have even done the work. And then there was one particular instance that

[00:45:42] happened in Nigeria, they did damn broke. And then we had about 13 communities flooded. And over 2,000 hectares of rice farm was gone in that instance. And that was just a painful, painful experience. We had issues where we had invested in the main farm

[00:46:02] and one of our coordinators was there and then communal fight broke out. And this gas life was at risk. We had a community farm manager having to learn how to defend himself by any means possible on the farm. All of these we had issues with where

[00:46:19] we've even invested in the farm. The cycle goes through full circle and you don't get to sell the produce as fast as you wanted to sell. And you're supposed to pay people back their monies in time. You have to find ways of using,

[00:46:33] whereas funding capital you've raised from equity investors to support that while waiting for the proceeds of the farm to come back to pay people. And I think the one that just knocked us off guard was when COVID hit and a lot of things were seriously disrupted.

[00:46:51] We in learning from several other organizations, we started moving away from the core production to working on, okay, the farmer is done. We guarantee that we'll buy up your produce. So when you're done, we will go to the market

[00:47:05] to buy it up from you as a farmer and then we'll trade so that we don't get into the issues of dealing with the core production problems that presented themselves then. And so just dealing with all those challenges, we had successes yet,

[00:47:18] but we had a lot of challenges to deal with. And we worked with roughly about 400,000 farmers across the 17 states. So it wasn't such a very easy business to do. It was maybe one of the hardest things I'd ever done. It sounds like the operating environment

[00:47:36] supports the business model of this platform, would you say? It did not. The operating environment did its best to support, but it didn't do its best to protect. And when I said support, there were a lot of amplification of our work that happened, a lot of media attention,

[00:47:55] a lot of talk about the impact of our work. So that was great to get for a business that was just starting off in an area where nobody had done something before in that regard. So because we were in a blue ocean,

[00:48:08] there were a lot of things we had to craft out ourselves, a lot of things we had to build out ourselves. I saw many other businesses start up. So when people see a business raise money, everybody wants to copy and paste

[00:48:21] until they then understand the problems involved in in that business that they just go off the radar. But I noticed for myself that we had, we didn't have so much cover. We had to build a lot of cover ourselves. But I think the environment wasn't so protective

[00:48:40] at that time. I mean, it was learning what we're doing. We're innovators in that space. It was learning. And for us even as business people, we were also learning, adapting, trying to protect ourselves, trying to make sure that we were in a position

[00:48:54] to protect even those that were investing in these businesses, also protecting the farmers, trying to still be true to the core of the work we had set out to do. There was so much learning, whether it was from the environment to even for us as the entrepreneurs.

[00:49:10] And eventually, I mean, I'm excited that some players have gone on to make it work. And a lot of things have happened now in the agriculture space with technology. And maybe the spark started with the fact that we decided to come together to build

[00:49:24] what was then known as farm crowding. I guess that's one of the challenges of being the first mover in the market. You're paving the way, paving the ground and making mistakes along the way as you kind of find your way. So again, what lessons did you take

[00:49:40] from your experience of farm crowding that you've potentially taken to what you're doing now at Treeps? I think we pretty much learned that we should build small, let the mistakes happen when you're small before you become really growing really fast. I think that was something.

[00:49:59] One good thing though that came out of farm crowding was we took the risk of building out the crowdfunding platform itself. We turned it into its own business called CrowdEvest. And eventually in farm crowding, we sold CrowdEvest. So we sold the business to new set of investors

[00:50:18] including one of the founders that wanted to lead that business, Temintoper or Motifalani. So in selling that business, we were able to raise about 10.5 million dollars in the sale to get that business off, to be a standalone business on its own. And I think that helped farm crowding

[00:50:34] to become, to stand up on its own as just focused on working with the farmers without focusing on the crowdfunding. So we separated the two businesses. So eventually CrowdEvest then became its own business. We sold 100% of the equity farm crowding had in it.

[00:50:50] I pretty much stepped down as CEO in CrowdEvest and sold, we all sold our shares to the new investor for that. And I think that eventually turned out to become CrowdEvest became its own business and became as they're growing in its own channel. For us in farm crowding,

[00:51:08] I think the lessons were just making those mistakes very early on is important, especially when you're small and learning from them. Two was, one the emotions of working and the impact work of working with the farmers was always at the forefront.

[00:51:24] One lesson I learned was focus on the money, focus on making money and building out a sustainable business, not just one that thrived on the emotions of working with the farmers. And then, I mean, I used to, that was a good thing,

[00:51:38] but it wasn't, we weren't doing our work we just grant, we're doing our work with, with real money is that people are giving that we're expecting a return on. So focusing on revenue generated and a sustainable business model was something that I also learned from the business.

[00:51:56] The thought in was partnerships, finding the right kind of partnerships to make sure that you are in a position to get leverage or get into a room with people that speak on your behalf without you being in a room

[00:52:10] so that you can open doors to expanding your businesses and not only with the monies that you make or your marketing spend, but doing so with partnerships that opens new trends for you. And then the last thing was hedging your risk with being in multiple jurisdictions

[00:52:28] and not just depending on one economy. I think that was something that I also learned while doing what we're doing in farm crowding. I mean, beyond all the road that is, you would talk about like understanding how to manage funders conflict, understanding how to raise funding.

[00:52:42] I mean, these are things that are very entrepreneurial. These were things that are really entrepreneurial. These were, but away from that, these lessons were some of the ones I had in building that business that I've taken on to share with people,

[00:52:56] to do better and also used for my own businesses like rents more small or trips. Thank you for sharing that invaluable knowledge. So moving on to trips, I'll give you the opportunity to tell us what is trips and why is it needed on the continent?

[00:53:13] Okay, so what started for me with trips was initially called Plenty Walker. Plenty Walker was launched in September 2019. It started from a journey where I came back from a trip and had to use the bus system in Lagos. And I went into a panic attack

[00:53:35] I had a shock literally. It was an experiment. I landed from, I went to speak at an event in Qatar in January of that year and landed in Lagos on January 16th of 2019. And when I came off the plane, I had a meeting with Flourmuse in Apapa.

[00:53:53] You can imagine if you know Lagos who are going from Murtala Mohamed Airport in Ikeja to Apapa, I landed 830, my meeting was 10 o'clock. I knew I couldn't do that with a car. So I had to get on a bike. I took two bikes. Wow.

[00:54:07] And my driver took my bags and everything I went to the office in Lekhi. So I took two bikes to get to Apapa and eventually got there in time for the meeting, finished the meeting and my colleagues were saying, hey, we'll have to use a boat

[00:54:21] to go across the ocean to get to CMS area of Lagos Island. I was like, okay, I'm excited. I mean, I took pictures while I was on the bike. So today I have taken a plane. I've taken the bike. I'm now taking a boat.

[00:54:36] I mean, I was like, how bad can it get? So I got to the other side of the lagoon with them. I was like, okay, so let's get Uber to the office. I said, no, there's one more trip. I said, let's take a bus. I'm like, okay.

[00:54:49] I hadn't taken a bus in a while. And we're like, okay, let's take the bus. Okay, we'll take up all the seats and the bus but let's sit on the bus and get to the office. And I sat on that bus and they were laughing at me

[00:55:01] because don't get me wrong. I used to use the bus regularly at some point when I was in Lasso at some point, when I was walking them in, I didn't have a car. I would jump on the bus. I knew how to drag for change with the conductor

[00:55:16] and all that. But I hadn't used the bus in many years. I can't remember. I think it was, I think last time I used the bus was maybe in 2007. So they were like, let's get on the bus. So I sat down and I was just watching.

[00:55:31] I was just watching how the driver, he had the towel on his neck and he was just pumping the engine and he was moving the gear and I could all of a sudden, I could see all the metal sticking out

[00:55:42] and all I was thinking about was antithetanus injection. If my hand just, if I get one caught here and I need antithetanus injection to get anything off my system that is not supposed to be there and the heat and we're going to traffic they was just unbelievable.

[00:55:56] And when I got to the office so we got the bus drivers right to our office in Oniruleki they were laughing at me. They were taking pictures of me. I was sweating. And at a point, I was like, are people going to walk every morning

[00:56:12] with their white shirts and red tie? And this is the experience they have to go through to get to the office. I found that incredible. And I called a friend of mine who is now my co-founder and president of Trips, Johnny Enna. Because at this time,

[00:56:30] he was the only one that had approached me and talked about doing something in the mobility space. He was, I used to like to drive white cars only and he had this platform that he raised monies to buy 300 tricycles in Lagos they call it KK.

[00:56:48] And he wanted me to invest in, I told him I'm not going to invest in any business that is focused on KK because they are the number one people that scratch my car every day in traffic. So why would I invest more money

[00:56:58] in a business that I know how to put more scratches on my car? It was just as simple as that. And so that day, I called him and I was like, I think I have something come to my house.

[00:57:07] It was a Friday, they come to my house on Saturday. Let's talk. And Johnny came around and I told him, I said, see this was the experience I had yesterday. He was laughing. I was like, hey, it's not my number. I said, no, it's not my number.

[00:57:18] I kind of just, like I cannot accept that it's normal. And he was like, okay, so what do you want to do? I said, I want to change it. Like why can people get air conditioned buses to go to work?

[00:57:27] Why can't I get a conducive way of going to the office? Why must he beat this? Or I'm dragging with a woman that's carrying stuff on my car and I'm looking for space to sit. And so we talked through it. One week later, I had to travel again

[00:57:42] at the, while waiting the airport, I called him. I said, I was going through three names, I'm from Hidam, for Plenty Worker, one of our names. And we arrived at, okay, let's call it Plenty Worker. And that was what gave birth to the idea

[00:57:54] that we wanted to put buses on the road to get people that were going to work, employees of organizations to have easy commute and not have to deal with the unpredictability, the lack of safety, and just being in that whole chaos of transporting themselves to the office, everything.

[00:58:10] And we found out that there were about nine million people that used the bus system in Lagos every single day. Yet the only option they had if they didn't have staff bus was to use the buses that were available to them, which were in those bad states.

[00:58:26] So we started working on it. We eventually went on to raise some money to buy 17 brand new buses. And we started off on the 16th of September, 2019. Six months into it, we had moved 100,000 people. We're excited, no funding. We moved 100,000 people.

[00:58:44] We were like, yes, we've hit a gold mine. And then COVID came knocking. And everywhere was shut down. And we had 17 brand new buses that were packed and the loan on them was moving. And we're looking at these buses in the office.

[00:59:02] One day I just decided that, okay, if it's medical supplies and food items that people can use very good to move, we removed all the seats in the bus. And I started providing medical supplies just to survive. So I'm moving medical supplies and food items.

[00:59:19] And then later on, I think about eight months later, things started opening up and we got back into transporting people. But essentially that was how we started out leading up to the success we've seen. The business has grown from there.

[00:59:32] We've moved now five million people across four countries. We entered into Ghana by acquiring star bus. We entered into Uganda by acquiring Uga bus. We had a similar deal in Kenya and we've seen the business grow, evolve from that.

[00:59:45] But today the core of what we do is still centered on that dream of moving employees of organizations or people renting the vehicles from our platform to move themselves in a very comfortable, predictable and structured manner. So the challenges that you faced during COVID

[01:00:03] is that the reason why the business transition from bus hailing to corporate mobility? So the challenges we faced during COVID made us understand that we needed to find alternative ways of generating revenue via transportation using the buses we had, number one. The challenges we faced also taught us

[01:00:27] that we didn't want to be an asset heavy business any longer. That was number two. And these two things drove us into moving from just bus hailing at that time to getting the organizations to come to us to rent the buses from us,

[01:00:45] to move their employees on a contractual based system. So we're simply a B2C platform when we launched but we started creating a B2B option that allowed organizations to move their employees through us on a contractual based system that lasted for a year or two years.

[01:01:01] And today it has evolved to become in our main state. We also experimented on interstate travel but there were a lot of issues we saw there and we said, okay, maybe this is not something a problem wanted to focus on.

[01:01:12] It also taught us to experiment and try things and know that, okay, at least we've tried if it works fine, if it doesn't, we know we've tried it and we can keep it off the shelf and focus on what continues to make us the money.

[01:01:23] So those are some of the challenges we saw during COVID but moving on from there around 2021 leading to 2022, I noticed there was going to be a drought in funding and I wanted the business to be in a position along with my founders,

[01:01:39] we decided I wanted business to be in a position where we will make enough money from what we're generating to take care of our salaries and operational expenses. And we looked critically at our business and saw that boss healing wasn't caught in it for us

[01:01:53] at that time or the model that we originally had around boss healing wasn't caught in it from us because the margins were making was low as 2%, some cases 1.5%. Meanwhile, our B2B business was making us about 18% in margin. So we then started focusing on how we doubled down

[01:02:11] on what was giving us more money and reduced on what was not giving us more money. It affected our brand because people that were used to us running a B2C platform, the general public started noticing that they weren't seeing trips branded bosses again on the road.

[01:02:29] But we were running, but because we are focused now on commuting for organizations, we couldn't brand our bosses. So we have to remove our brands on those bosses to then start providing transportation services for the organizations we've been doing that for. Today we're averaging about 5,000 employees

[01:02:47] going to work in the morning and going back home in the evening using trips enabled bosses. But you wouldn't see those bosses branded on the road. We had to take those decisions and it felt like, oh, there wasn't much buzz around us.

[01:03:00] We just had to double down what was making us money. And God helped us by February of 2023. We broke even. We got to a place where we were able to generate enough to pay our salary. So even when many other businesses were struggling

[01:03:17] with funding or maybe they had scaled so much and built such a big-mounted business that needed a lot of funding to continue to thrive. And when I wasn't coming in, they were struggling to continue to keep their lights on. For us as a business,

[01:03:29] we had streamlined ourselves down to building our business out of the revenue we generated. We ran out of investor funds very early on. Today our investors are excited about the business. I want to now support future rounds of funding because they've seen that we've created a business

[01:03:44] that doesn't rely exclusively on investor funds, but it's running on an engine that is generating revenue internally to run its operational expenses. I think those were lessons we took back. And today, without building products with our team internally to see how some of those opportunities we had

[01:04:03] with the B2C platform, we will unlock them again, but we do it smarter and better for cost of employees of organizations. So I think that those are lessons we took from all of those journeys. I'm very happy that the team is fully behind me

[01:04:16] on what we are building right now while doing so from a self-sustaining position. So you mentioned that you didn't want to be an asset heavy business, but I guess despite that, this type of business does rely on the availability of vehicles.

[01:04:31] So how scalable is this business model in Africa? Fantastic question, Kessa. It's a question that we've been asked several times. And one of the things we've unlocked is how we understood what shared mobility could do for a business like us.

[01:04:48] And the past we called us as a cashier platform. It opened up the opportunity to find how individuals could unlock their vehicles to provide transportation services for our customers on our platform. Initially done so from a rental perspective, but today done so from a regular transportation perspective

[01:05:07] where corporate mobility becomes the mainstay. So what we've built out for us internally is a system that allows us to provide services to organizations. We have an organization that has 680 employees we serve on a daily basis, but we also have organizations that only have five employees

[01:05:25] that want to use the service. Now you have multiples of five employees that want to use your service. You're not going to go ahead and get a 15-seater or 30-seater bus to move five people and waste such resources on the road.

[01:05:38] So what we've unlocked from us in the system is where individuals invest their vehicles in our platform to move these employees in smaller groups and they're making their money from trips and we're paying them from what we are generating on a weekly basis.

[01:05:56] We've seen also individuals that are going to walk in the morning and want to be able to make extra income come on our platform to move employees and then they go to work in the morning. And then when they're going back, they move the employees back

[01:06:09] and they're going back home and they're making extra income on our platform. This is where we've been able to unlock assets to fulfill the demands of our customers beyond just the regular buses that we have on our platform. And this is why we're doubling down in our expansion

[01:06:25] into new markets without owning the assets. We're able to unlock the opportunity to steal service, whether it's companies or schools or churches or mosques or groups of people that want to move from place to place. That's how we've unlocked the assets on our platform.

[01:06:40] And that's how we see ourselves scaling across the continent. So would you say, are there enough vehicles and individuals in the market who are willing and able to use this type of service? Oh yes, absolutely. I think what we've seen is that we have...

[01:07:01] You have people going to work in the morning and they have empty caskets. It happens every day. That's why there are traffic in... You have traffic in Lagos. You have traffic in other cities in Africa. The opportunity for them to now end

[01:07:15] while doing the regular thing they would have done in the morning is what trips are presenting to them. And we've seen many of them jump on this. We have individuals that have two cars and one of the cars is always sitting down and onto maybe the weekend.

[01:07:28] Many of them unlock those cars on trips to move employees of organizations and then make it money from it. Some of them, most of them will bring those cars on board with their driver so that they can keep the vehicles maintained at the level they want.

[01:07:42] And we unlock opportunities for them to build wealth. And so you have this level of access to vehicles on our platform and it continues to give us the advantage of scaling without having to bother about owning assets. In addition to that, you have transportation companies that have vehicles

[01:08:02] that for instance, they're doing interstate travel and they have 10 buses that are always doing interstate travel. But the cost of maintenance on interstate travel is always going up. They want to unlock more opportunities of doing interstate commute and they unlock those vehicles on trips,

[01:08:17] 10, 20, 50 highest buses or 50 coaster buses. They're looking on trips for us to move employees of organizations and make money for them. So I think the combination of whether it's the transportation companies or individuals that want to build wealth for themselves by the extra vehicle they have at home

[01:08:34] or they want to build wealth for themselves while doing the regular thing they were doing before going to work in the morning and coming back in the evening. Combination of all of these will help us provide commute for 480 million people that are employed on the continent

[01:08:48] to continue to move on a daily basis to walk and back. This sounds extremely exciting. So if we look at the space as a whole, are there any current trends that you're seeing in Africa's mobility space that you're currently excited about? The application of artificial intelligence

[01:09:08] is something that I'm beginning to bring some around and how people can become more seamless in how they use transportation services. I think that's something exciting. I mean, it's just the process of rather than clicking and talking and using an app every single time,

[01:09:24] what if you're able to have a conversation with our software to get you the same service and what if the software is able to keep your likes in such a way that it can predict what you will do at a particular time

[01:09:36] and provides the options of those services to you consistent that in that something I find really exciting that's coming up in the space. So not necessarily building the platform that provides that service but especially using what exists today to make the service a lot more richer

[01:09:52] for people on the continent. I think that's something that I find exciting. Two is that more and more people are going back to work and more and more organizations do not want to own the assets of buses or maintain the assets of buses to move their employees.

[01:10:07] They are unlocking the opportunities to walk with trips or trips to walk with them. And so we've seen more and more of this happening and these organizations come to us and we are now providing services to them. I think that's something I find very exciting on the continent.

[01:10:23] The thought in is we're having a growing population of very migrant young, enterprising individuals who want to move from place to place and having trips on their phone to be able to provide transportation services for them as they move from city to city.

[01:10:39] I go from Kenya and I'm in Nigeria and at the same trips up I can use it to commute across, I mean within the city. I do that when I get to Accra. I do that when I get to Kampala

[01:10:50] and modern 16 other cities were in on the continent. We just choose how seamless a person can use one app to commute across the cities without having to bother about having to download several apps. And I think that's something we find exciting.

[01:11:03] So if you ask me, I'll just say these three things I find really exciting and how we as trips will be pioneering or position ourselves to take advantage of the opportunities of delivering services that are focused on these three maintenance. With those three things in mind

[01:11:22] if we look at the future of Africa where you see Africa's mobility space say in the next five years. They move from fossil fuels to CNGs or electric vehicles. I think there will be more and more of this happening on the continent.

[01:11:39] And you would find players partner with many of these companies that are providing such services to transition from moving is being very climate conscious in how people move from organizations to organizations. I think you see more investment going into the mobility space for businesses that are paying attention

[01:11:58] to their climate footprint and how they boost a better climate that moves towards zero emission on the continent. So I think that's one thing I see happening. The second thing is you find more and more indigenous players coming to the continent and the African continent.

[01:12:15] I want to play in the African continent for Africa. And that's why for us at TRIPS we continue to double down on Africa as a whole and not just in one domain or one market like Nigeria. I think you would see more intra trade activities happen

[01:12:30] in the mobility space. I think you will see also there'll be less divide between whether you're moving people or moving goods. I mean, and you already see that today with Uber where a guy driving on Uber can move people from place to place

[01:12:46] or decide to move food from place to place or move goods from place to place. I think more and more logistics as a whole and transportation will encompass everything around four wheels or two wheels or three wheels taking people or goods from one place to another

[01:13:01] and you have less and less divide between the two platforms so whether you're moving people or you're moving goods and services that creates an attention to the mobility space that goes beyond just community for individuals but opens up opportunities for all that in so happening space.

[01:13:17] Lastly is as people continue to move and Africans continue to move we will see more opportunities of investment in the space and I think for us in trade we wanna be at the forefront of all of these things and make sure that we are innovative,

[01:13:31] we're building sustainable business that's creating this opportunity because with a very effective transportation network on the continent, businesses will thrive better. So it's maybe the backdrop of economies on the continent and that's why we're excited about it. As people we often have quotes, mantras, African proverbs

[01:13:50] or affirmations that keep us going when times are challenging or when times are good. Do you have one that you can share with us today? Yes I do. I mean I have many, I'm always reading books. So I think there's one that stands out for me

[01:14:11] and it's by Nelson Mandela. One of the things that I like about this is beyond the fact that it's inspiring it speaks to the daring spirit of a man where he says to himself that you're expected of the challenges that you face

[01:14:29] you constantly find a way of moving forward. By the way, I found out that it's not Mandela that wrote it but I know that he's one that made it popular and so it goes like this out of the night that covers me

[01:14:42] black as the peat from pole to pole I think whatever God may be for my unconquerable soul in the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winched nor cried aloud until the bludgeon of chance my head is bloody but unbowed beyond this place of rot and tears

[01:15:05] looms but the horror of shade. And yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how straight the gate how charged with the punishments of the school I am the master of my fate I am the captain of my soul.

[01:15:26] I think I find this truly inspirational because for everything I do as an entrepreneur this just encompasses it and I found about this particular poem in 2000 and 10 and it's been the most inspiring point for me that it speaks to what I have to deal with

[01:15:50] the pains I have to go with the challenges I have to do it the things I have to hear that are good, bad and ugly but still finding ways to make sure I champion what I want in life and ensuring that I am responsible

[01:16:06] for every cause of action that I have to take and where those cause of actions work fine I am humble enough to know that it wasn't just by my power I'm grateful to God for the opportunity to make that happen where it doesn't work fine

[01:16:23] I am sensible enough to learn from my lessons and do better but I will never flinch or say to myself that I won't take a responsibility for the fact that I am the master of my fate and the captain of my soul

[01:16:37] so I think that's why it's such an impactful one for me I don't think we could have ended the conversation on a better or higher note so thank you Onyeka for sharing your incredible journey insights it's definitely been one of my favourite conversations I've had on the podcast

[01:16:58] looking forward to listening back to it I think we were scheduled to speak for 40-50 minutes and it's been well over an hour so now Brilliant, thank you for your time it's been definitely a ride this conversation we've come from

[01:17:13] I think we've covered almost 20 years of your journey so amazing, thank you Thanks a lot Tessa I'm gonna one thing I would say is I'm putting everything into a book I turned 40 this year October 2024 depending on when someone is listening to this

[01:17:32] so I'm gonna be putting all of this into a book the 10 years of my life so I broke it down into 10, 10 years as the first 10 years of forming 10 years of discovering 10 years of working for others and 10 years of building for myself leading up to my 40th

[01:17:48] so I put all my lessons the good, bad, the ugly everything about me into that book and hopefully it just inspires and helps people first know me better second, appreciate the journey and the pains, the scars and not just see the glory

[01:18:02] and then eventually do better in their lives by what I have shared so I'm really grateful for the opportunity and thank you so much for your patience too in making sure we got to this time to have the call because I know we've been

[01:18:15] trying to reschedule here and there Yes, yes we've scheduled, rescheduled but now we've got the and it's been definitely worth it and I look forward to reading the book and I'll definitely give you my feedback but yeah, I'm excited Thank you Thank you very much Tess

[01:18:33] I appreciate it thanks for the opportunity again Thank you for your time and thank you for being so candid and open during our conversation today I appreciate it You have yourself a great day I'll keep in Bye bye Thank you to everyone who has listened

[01:18:47] and stay tuned to the podcast If you've enjoyed this episode please subscribe, share or tell 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