Thank you International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) for giving Tekedia Institute the opportunity to participate in your world-class program as a knowledge partner for two days. We’re confident that you will continue to invent and innovate on systems to make hunger history. Thanks.
Thank you Thomas Theeuwes, Roland Makilla BOKONA, Adepeju Akinrinde – Makinde MSC , ACIPM , SPHRi , GPHR and the whole Maersk team for the opportunity to discuss market systems, focusing on Agility in Workplaces. The damp-proof course (yes, foundation) of high performing teams is communication. That foundation supports the four pillars of clarity, support, empathy and trust to unlock superior engagement and operational execution.
When we do just that, your customers become fans, and fandom is born. There are many attributes we begin to see in such firms: perceptive innovation, obsession of absolute customer satisfaction, ruthless pragmatism (things just work), etc.
It was a moment, visiting the global leader in logistics. Thanks A.P. Moller – Maersk.
The Cold War between the Lekki Massacre Panelist
There have been an on going squabble amongst the Panelists set up to look into the Endsars Lekki Masacre which took place on 20th of October, 2020 and previous police brutality and police abuse of power set up by the Lagos state government in October, 2020. Their assignment is simple, to look into the matters of police brutality which led to the infamous endsars protest resulting to the 20th of October 2020 incident, make your funding and submit reports of your findings and recommendations.
The different stands taken by counsels to different sides of the divide have been made public. While the counsel to the Lagos state government Mr. Aboidun Jelili Owonikoko SAN openly criticized the the other panelists on air during an Arise News Interview on Thursday, November 18, 2021. He claimed that there are about forty notable discrepancies in the report submitted by the panel one of which is that a witness who testified during the panel session and is clearly still alive is reported to be dead in the panel’s report and money awarded to his family. The learned Silk also criticized that some of the panelists didn’t attend the panel sessions enough in order to make an informed decision. He also went ahead to state that some of the panelists was fingered for collecting bribes at some point, that which nearly ground the panel session to halt if not for the timely intervention of the president of the Nigerian Bar Association and other NBA officials who called the situation to order.
The panel submitted their report which is said to be a 309 pages of report on Monday, 15th of November, 2021 to the Lagos state government out of which the Lagos state government set up another panel to look into the 309 pages report and come up with a white paper in two weeks.
Although, the contents of the report is yet to be made officially public but the leaked version of it have been making round the social media which one of the panelists stated that the contents of the leaked version is not far from the contents of the official version of the report submitted to the Lagos state government except for some typographical errors.
Tekedia Startup Masterclass: from Start-Up to Unicorn is designed to help founders, entrepreneurs, and those generally working in the startup ecosystems, to master the mechanics of building category-king startups.
The program runs for 8 weeks and it includes an hour-long one-on-one Zoom session every week, per participant, with Tekedia Institute’s Lead Faculty, Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe.
Pricing: $400 or N180,000 naira.
We invite you to register and let us meet in the class. Click the link and join today.
Nigerian startup Kippa, has raised $3.2 million in pre-seed funding round led by Berlin-based VC Target Global. Entrée Capital, Alter Global and Rally Cap Ventures are the other participating VCs.
The new financing round was also supported by a number of angel investors — Babs Ogundeyi, Kuda CEO; Sriram Krishnan, an investor in Khatabook; Raffael Johnen, Auxmoney CEO; Chris Bouwer; Kyane Kassiri; Edward Suh of Goodwater Capital; and Sajid Rahman — all invested in the startup.
Having found a friction in Nigerian small business space that has lasted for years – the inability of business owners to keep track of their everyday happenings – the startup developed the Kippa app to help them keep business records.
Kippa works as a simple app where small business owners can keep track of their daily income and expense transactions, create invoices and receipts, manage inventory and generally monitor how their businesses ebb and flow over time.
The company said it also helps merchants to keep track of debtors and send automated reminders, and it’s the most important feature of the app as merchants who use it recover debts 3x faster.
The company, which was founded in February by Kennedy Ekezie, Duke Ekezie and Jephthah Uche, said it has grown an average of 126% month-on-month since it was launched in June. Its growing customer-base with over 130,000 active businesses, is made up of small kiosks, street corner shops, local food vendors and high-end merchants, who according to Kippa, have brought in more than $300 million in the past five months.
Kippa said it has two areas of interest; bookkeeping and financial services that will fill the vacuums plaguing small businesses in Nigeria.
CEO Kennedy Ekezie told TechCrunch that the majority of transactions carried out by small businesses are cash-based, and more than 30% of sales happen on credit. This makes their lack of working capital the biggest challenge of these businesses.
“For us, what we do is we have such a unique opportunity to provide financial services to users. For most of them, Kippa is the first B2B SaaS app that they’re using,” he said.
“And we do have a unique opportunity to help them accept online digital payments, to provide them with working capital, digital savings and plug them into the financial ecosystem.”
Kippa is counting on credit and other financial services to make revenue since the record-keeping aspect is generally free. The startup is charging commission or interests credits or loans issued to customers.
Lina Chong, investment director for the lead investor, Target Global, said the firm’s investment interest in Kippa was buoyed by these metrics, which indicate a strong need for the product in the Nigerian market.
“Our investment in Kippa will enable it to grow and be the first-choice financial management solution for small businesses in Africa.”
Kippa’s pre-seed round is one of the largest in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa. The startup said it will be invested in growing its merchant base, improving its product, scaling the team, and venturing into financial services.
However, Kippa is up to compete with other players such as Khatabook in the bookkeeping market. But it is counting on the finance feature of its services to stay ahead.