By Sandra Nnaemeka
Through their fresh ideas and potential for growth, startup companies are reaping the many benefits of innovation – particularly in relation to economic and digital growth in Africa.
It is with this in mind that 4Afrika, Microsoft’s business and development engine in Africa, supports startups like MAX.ng, an on-demand ride-hailing mobile application, Riby.me, a fintech solutions that enables co-operatives to plan, save and invest regardless of members’ earning power and Flutterwave.com that drives growth for banks and businesses across Africa through digital payment technology; three exciting Nigerian startups – to offer funding opportunities, technological access and skills transfer, and other support that has helped their businesses develop, and positon themselves for the next step in their journeys, according to a report by TechEconomy.ng.
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The founders of these Nigerian startups were on hand during a Microsoft fireside chat session to discuss the importance of innovation in their respective industries and their contributions toward Africa’s digital transformation.
MAX.ng’s Story
Chinedu Azodoh is CTO and Co-founder at MAX; Chinedu develops MAX’s financing and pricing models and validates the key business model assumptions.
Currently, MAX.ng has grown the riders’ network from 3000 to 5000. With over 60 employees and does minimum of $100,000 monthly turnover, MAX has gone ahead to launch ‘Champion Academy’, which is a reward system whereby a rider turns to bike owner.
Here Chinedu’s comments: “What we have doing is trying to change the narratives among ‘Okada’ riders to bike riding. We are working in Lagos State Government and the Federal road Safety Commission, trying to help the riders and invariably the passengers and the economy achieve three key things- safety, affordability and accessibility.
“It may interest you to know that after 7pm, 73% of riders are women. Our platform is such to support these people”, he said.
In terms of safety, MAX is changing the mentality among riders. For stance statistics from the FRSC indicates that 1.4% (passengers), 1.3% (riders) is the compliance rates on wearing of helmet; MAX.ng wants to change that as wearing of helmet brings about 70% less injury during accident.
“Affordability: we are about 50-60% cheaper than what other taxi hailing platforms are doing. Okada of 120mh costs about N600k each. We are providing them to our riders in an affordable manner. Others not on our platform pay 75% additional fee on the ride yearly and find it difficult to meet up. We are leveraging data to provide these services and make it affordable for people in a safe manner.
Impact of Microsoft 4Afrika on MAX.ng
Interestingly, MAX.ng started discussions with Microsoft in far- away New York. Chinedu recalls, “Our first interaction with Microsoft was in 2015. At that time, we were not considering massive infrastructure or hosting, but as the conversation continued we embraced Azure and have essentially grown with it.
“Through Microsoft mentorship programme, we do a lot of work on data analytics and machine learning. It has been an amazing help. Microsoft has been a dependable partner. 4Afrika has had a huge impact on MAX.ng and what we have been able to achieve so far”.
“The money we would have ordinarily spent on hosting alone is being channelled to other things that MAX Champion Academy which was we launched to take away young people off the street; provide them with technology to help them start off”.
Riby.me
Salami Abolore is the CEO of Riby. For 5 years between 2012 & 2016, he was central to $10m in revenue and managed about $30m in business value. During this period, Salami founded Riby, a FinTech company that focuses on finance management for Cooperatives- Savings & Trade Groups- and that helps the groups & their individual members Save, Borrow & Invest, Together.
The goal here is to see everyone using Riby.me system achieve a sustainable and repeatable Business & Personal Finance Growth. Simply put, with Riby.me ‘Isusu’ has gone digital; it about a complete digital inclusion package.
In numbers: Riby.me launched in May 216 is working with Union Bank, and other branchless banks with over 1.3million people in different cooperative societies are registered on the platform. It has qualified over 700,000 for credits. 300,000 have already accessed the credits!
“Our role is helping groups’ embodied members, create accounts and process members’ funds. We are like bank without walls.
“We are headed to where anybody that works (artisans or salary earners) can have a future through consistent saving of funds. Through that, we are changing the mentality of non-saving culture; and giving cooperative societies more access to members and open them to extra lenders. It is a means of fighting poverty through job creation; teach the principles of consistent savings.
Riby.me’s unique prepositions
“If we don’t do that in two years-time people would ask why isn’t anybody doing this. Millions of people are into cooperative society and there is no banking solution around them. In fact, they are not treated as critical customers of the banks. It is easy to engage in ‘Ajuo’ (financial contributory system among members of cooperative society that has no banking system around it), but that is less than 10% of what cooperative society is.
If you look at different sectors of the economy the staff cooperative society have billions circulating among members, but there is no solution to harness the economic potentials.
The USP is how to digitise the whole process such that through the platform a cooperative society can open account for member, issue ATM, and conduct a whole lot of checks and balances.
Riby.me’s encounter with 4Afrika and the Impact so far:
Salami continues, “In February 2017 we had just 50 people on our platform, but we knew we are going to grow very readily. Today, we work with a lot of enterprises; thus, we needed 24/7 uptime; that is how we connected with 4Afrika- the Azure has been available and we are even getting more supports. We are even trying to get to other Microsoft platforms that will enable the groups on our platforms to chat.
“I see Microsoft as a matured company that wants startups to succeed; all I can advise other startups is get prepared, be focused (be sure of what you want to achieve) and approach Microsoft for mentorship, funding and other opportunities”.
Well, Riby.me is seriously deepening digital inclusion and currently records 40,000 new signups monthly for a startup that started with 75 signups per month; that is a huge leapfrog thanks to the power of technological backup provided by 4Afrika.
Let us hear from Flutterwave.com.
Azeez Oluwafemi is the Vice-President of Product Engineering Flutterwave Inc. He is a software engineer and leads the product engineering team at Flutterwave. He started his career at GTBank where he worked for 8 years and helped build robust and stable innovative solutions for the payment industry.
In other words, Azeez understands the pain points when Nigerians want to send or receive funds from partners abroad. Yes, Flutterwave is about connecting Africa to global economy.
“There are businesses that suffered from getting payment from partners abroad. To receive payment on online store was hellish. So far, Flutterwave an infrastructure company makes payment easy. We power other banking solutions like ALAT”, said Azeez.
“Our goal is to see that any merchant in Africa can process their payment with ease”, he added while he further disclosed that “Flutterwave has done 30 million transactions and N1billion worth of processed payments in the last two years. We are restoring confidence of the outside world on Africa. We are critically involved in the process of financial inclusion”.
Well, Mastercard and Visa of this world are there, but how is Flutterwave penetrating the market? “Before you can transact with other platforms you need to do some integrations; we do that for you”. Connecting to Fluterwave connects you to the global economy and offers greater reach”, he further explained.
Flutterwave and 4Afrika: the convincing story:
“Our goal has been to provide always available infrastructure- which isn’t easy to do in Nigeria. It was becoming harder for us to achieve until an encounter with Azure- Most of our core- infrastructure run on Azure. Because of that seamless offerings following optimal network availability, we are now present in five African countries and United States with target to launch in other cities soon.
From MAX, Riby to Flutterwave and other500,000 SMEs online that have been brought online and offered support, the mission of Microsoft 4Afrika Programme is being fulfilled.
This mission was re-echoed by the Communications Lead, Microsoft, Yemi Orimolade who moderated the fireside chat session.
He said, “Microsoft’s mission is to support any individual, startup or organisation irrespective of geographical location. This has been well pronounced by the stories of these startups in Nigeria who actually started conversation with Microsoft in either New York or Nairobi”.