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32 Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 107

BY: VICTOR OLUWOLE

K

udiGo is a Ghanian fintech startup that offers a mobile-based retail management POS application, which empowers micro-SME retailers in sub-Saharan Africa, to seamlessly manage their business process and become financially inclusive through integration with a legally compliant accounting system.

Founded in 2017 by Kingsley Abrokwah, Bright Ahedor and Gideon Boateng, this KudiGo's solution is fully mobile. It offers Open APIs for easy integration with mobile and card payment services ensuring instant payment processing.

In our interview with Kingsley Abrokwah, CEO and Co-founder KudiGo, we touched on how he built his consumer retail software company for the informal sector, the company's products and services, and his advice for new startups.

Q: Tell us about your background, what did you venture into before starting up in this sector?

F E AT U R E I N T E RV I E W

DIGITISING AFRICA’S MSME RETAIL SPACE A: We have been actively involved in the technology space over the past 10 years and counting. With a background in programming from the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), we have won quite many competitions in the tech and startup world.

We came first with Startup Weekend Accra 2013 and were finalists at DemoAfrica, SeedStars, and Mobile Web Africa, to mention a few.

We also started two other tech companies; Chillax and Pentium Tech before. But right now, we've answered the call of redefining consumer retail in Africa. Hence, KudiGo is the primary focus at the moment.

Q: Describe your company services/products and any other information you would like to provide.

A: KudiGo is a company that has set out to provide solutions for the retail space. w w w. b u s i n e s s e l i t e s a f r i c a . c o m

Our products have been personalised to the African market, and we strive to understand our users and the varying ways they use our system. At the moment, we offer StoreFront and RapidGate as tailored solutions for specific industries.

StoreFront helps the informal, small/medium scale retailer (or wholesaler) to manage their business. This includes keeping inventory, records of sales activities and expenses, non-cash payments facilitation and accounting system integration.

RapidGate was created for the suppliers, distributors, and large-scale wholesalers in a bid to offer them a way to track their goods and its market infiltration - from the warehouse to the end-consumer. This would help to keep track of their activities and predict market trends based on the informative data that RapidGate provides.

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43 Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 107

Yola Founded in 2007 and known initially as Synthasite, this South Africa-based tech company was recognised in 2009 by BusinessWeek as one of the "50 Tech Startups You Should Know." In the same year, the company raised $20 million in series B funding from Reinet Investments S.C.A. They won the Recognition for Excellence in Customer Support and Service (RECSS) awards from Support Awards.

Platforms that allowed people to build their websites with little or no knowledge of software engineering were a rarity in 2007, making Yola an instant success. By 2014, the 7-year old company had grown to 9 million users worldwide with upgraded software. Today, Yola has over 60 employees working out of their Cape Town and San Francisco offices, and have expanded their operations to service over 50 million active websites.

Jobberman is a premier employment services firm in Africa, established in 2009 and headquartered in Lagos. Opeyemi Awoyemi, Olalekan Olude, and Ayodeji Adewunmi—its founders—were all students at Obafemi Awolowo University (O.A.U.) when Ayodeji got the inspiration for Jobberman while reading about the Indian job search site, Naukri.com. In 2012, they established a Jobberman Ghana branch, and by 2015 were acquired 100%

by One Africa Media (O.A.M.).

Since then, Jobberman has been nominated for a 'Best Use of Technology' award from The Future Awards Africa (Y Naija), featured at no. 8 on Forbes' 'Top 20 Tech Start-Ups in Africa,' and included in

ARTICLE

the McKinsey Internet Report list of most' Innovative Companies in Nigeria.' Today, 11 years after its founding, Jobberman is one of the largest job search platforms in Africa, with over 10,000 companies and one million registered job seekers.

MXIT A pioneer messaging application in Africa, Mxit was founded in 2005 by Herman Heunis, a Namibian entrepreneur, and had its headquarters in South Africa.

The feature phone application covered services like social networking, file transfers, music & entertainment, banking, mobile voice clips, and was available on Windows, iOS, Android, and Blackberry phones. At the height of its operations, in 2012, Mxit was reportedly present in over 120 countries, had about 50 million users, and transmitted over 250 million messages per day.

However, this success was short-lived as Mxit closed down its operations and went out of business in the fall of 2016. Its former board chairman, Michael Jordaan, in an interview with Fin24, is quoted as saying "customers switching to WhatsApp when they upgraded from feature phones to smartphones, and Mxit not upgrading quickly enough from feature phones to smartphones, sounded its death knell”.

M-Pesa Regularly touted as Africa's premier mobile money service, M-Pesa was created in 2007

by Safaricom— a Kenyan mobile network operator—to cater to the unbanked. Since then, they have expanded to several countries around the world, including w w w. b u s i n e s s e l i t e s a f r i c a . c o m

Afghanistan, India, Tanzania, Albania, and South Africa. In some of those countries, operations have shut down or are growing at unimpressive levels, and this is due to reasons like regulatory curbs in India and poor market fit in South Africa.

Despite all that, M-Pesa seems to be doing well as they were recently nominated for the Global Mobile Awards, an honour that they had received ten years earlier. Today, they have about 400,000 active agents and 37 million customers in seven countries and have reported revenue growth of 20.9 % year-on-year, and a 17.5% growth in chargeable transactions per customer.

Wari Kabirou Mbodje founded Wari S.A. - a FinTech company, headquartered in Dakar, in 2008. At the time of launching, Wari operated within the territories of the eight WAEMU countries—Senegal, Togo, Guinea-Bissau, Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. As part of their expansion efforts, Wari partnered with M.F.S. Africa and MasterCard, in 2016; also, with World Remit and Terra Pay in 2017. However, in 2018, the planned acquisition of Tigo Senegal was foiled when the ex-Millicom subsidiary was sold instead to Saga Holdings Senegal.

That was simply a bump in the road as Wari S.A. is, today, present in over 60 countries around the world, with 500,000 outlets—45,000 of which are in Africa.

And the award-winning payment platform continues to serve millions of businesses and customers around the world.

62 Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 107

S TA RT U P A F R I C A

Going Above and

BEYOND

…celebrating top-of-the-crop staff members in Africa’s work space

63 Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 107

S TA RT U P A F R I C A

Going Above and

BEYOND

…celebrating top-of-the-crop staff members in Africa’s work space

w w w. b u s i n e s s e l i t e s a f r i c a . c o m

66 Business Elites Africa / ISSUE 107

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Health Magazine issues, and being a foodie, I loved food more. lol Getting insights from top professionals and reading about their journey across various industries and sectors has always been a source of motivation to me in my entrepreneurial journey.

The need to know more about our cultural background cannot be overemphasized.

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Magazine Review: Business Elites Africa is really good. I appreciate the fact that women in business are recognized, featured and also helped to attain higher heights. You are doing a great job and this is laudable…. GREAT JOB!!

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