Tekedia Capital is working to build the “Paystack, Flutterwave, Kudabank of Nigeria’s insurance”.  The goal is to capture massive value via New Generation Insurers in  Nigeria just as the New Generation Banks did in the 1990s. But for this new generation of insurance firms, we also want to overlay what modern fintechs are doing in banking. So, at the end, we will have new generation insurers. In our upcoming dealflow, our Syndicate members will get to see our vision through what  we are putting together on this. I do believe that insurance remains a latent opportunity but we need to open Nigeria’s playbook, bring solid behavioural economics, baked in software, to redesign the sector. We think that this is MASSIVE. 

We are already working and I am extremely confident that we can write micro-policies and use behavioural economics to change the ordinance of the business. We will move first and scale first, hold the advantages and capture the opportunities.

If you are interested in this, I invite you to check Tekedia Capital. We will create a new generation insurer and I am expecting it to be big.  I have two entities working on this. One team has a brilliant young man who created and sold a company to Wakanow and later another to Jobberman. I have so much confidence that both firms will outperform. He has shown that exits can happen fast and quick in Nigeria. He has INSIGHTS about Nigeria and battle-tested.

At Tekedia Capital, we want to build the Next Africa via category-leading empires of the future. Go here and see what Tekedia Capital Syndicate does.

We believe that it is not Nigerians that should change to love insurance products. We believe that insurance products must evolve to be relevant in the lives of Nigerians and their companies. Before the 1990s, people hated banks until banks evolved their products. We think it is time for the insurance sector to be redesigned.

In the last ten centuries, the Chinese economy was the world’s largest in at least six. The 21st century is expected to flip from the United States to China, breaking a run which the US started around 1894 when it overtook the British economy. Building on knowledge through discoveries in transistors, microprocessors, Internet, and others, the 20th century was an American century.

But China began to rise with pragmatism through an entirely new economic playbook which took the world by storm. As I wrote in the Harvard Business Review, “China designed and executed a policy that shrank the industrialization process in a mere 25 years — something that many economies took at least a century to do.” I have followed up on that thesis in many briefs for investment banks, postulating that China has already won the future!

Sure, ex-president Donald Trump came and put some pedals. But unfortunately, like the Igbo proverb will say, when you see the Aneke the bird dancing by the roadside, check well as something is beating the music it is dancing to. Yes, China’s competitive advantage is that it is the manufacturing capital of the world – and its advantages are accelerating and compounding daily. You can buy an “iPhone case” and get it shipped from China to New York for $2.87 at eBay. Try to ship a package of the same weight from Atlanta to New York and the United Postal Service will put you behind by at least $7 excluding the content.

So, how is that cheap logistics possible? That is China’s double play. Make logistics so low and outcompete all SMEs and small manufacturers anywhere in the world. And use that playbook to ramp up development. There is a reason why shipping from China to Lagos is cheaper than transporting from Lagos to Sokoto!

Huawei rose and the US had issues with it, cutting it off from the sources of integrated circuits and processors.

But instead of making space for another nation, the news today is that Xiaomi is now the world’s largest phone maker: “Not long after it displaces Apple to clinch the No. 2 spot for Q2 2021, Xiaomi has taken the first spot as the world’s biggest smartphone vendor for the first time. That’s according to July’s numbers from Counterpoint Research, which has Xiaomi in first with 17.1 percent of the global market, Samsung in second with 15.7 percent, and Apple in third with 14.3 percent.” Xiaomi is a Chinese brand.

Now, Joe Biden, would you cut-off Xiaomi? That would be a waste of time as another Chinese brand will emerge. This is a network effect kind of phenomenon. Yes, when you cut them, the fittest will grow and become dominant because the energy from China is so asymmetric for any other player in the world to have a chance.

Who is playing for Aneke the bird: Huawei gone, Xiaomi come….and we are documenting the ascension of China.

Xiaomi Topples Samsung, Becomes the Biggest Smartphone Maker

Quibi lost to TikTok because humans really like videos.Quibi picked dozens of creators, hoping it could get a hit within them. TikTok does that differently: millions of people post short videos and AI parses them and quickly finds one that is viral. It then promotes it and quickly everyone is entertained. Statistically, you have a higher chance of finding more viral videos in millions of amateurs content than in dozens created by experts.

Now, the TikTok algorithm has overtaken Facebook. A few days ago, I wrote that TikTok would emerge as Facebook’s existential threat. The future is short videos because people are distracted on mobile: “The total viewing time for TikTok in the U.S. and U.K. is longer than that for YouTube, and short videos will continue to attract attention,” App Annie, an app market intelligence company.

Today, the best Nollywood producer in Nigeria is Mr Macaroni (yes, Daddy Wa) who creates short videos of 2-4 minutes at least one every 3 days. He is pulling more influence than any Nollywood studio because fewer people have time for 90-minute videos. His clip on Obi Cubana with Don Jazzy was legendary (video below). That man is a genius because he writes, produces, edits, etc in 3 days with his team!

People, short videos are for the mobile. If you plan to build for that channel, you need to think short videos.

If Africa is mobile-first, those launching streaming video on demand (SVOD) companies must think again if their main channel for distribution is mobile internet! Otherwise, it is a hopeless venture with no chance for future value capture, unless there is a double play strategy which can capture the value via another means (e.g. MTN making money via data plan for selling you SVOD). If that double play is not there, run away, fast.

TikTok Tops Facebook, Becomes the Most Downloaded App

TikTok has come out of the many troubles of the past few years, following former president Trump’s executive orders targeting its operation in the United States. The short video app has witnessed record growth as its services become popular especially among young people.

A global survey of downloads in 2020 shows Chinese app on top of the list of social media providers for the first time since the study was first conducted in 2018, Nikkei Asia has the report.

As concern for personal privacy grows, Telegram, a messaging app that can delete posts, also ranked high during a year when social media use has been driven up by the COVID-19 pandemic.

ByteDance launched the international version of TikTok in 2017, and has since overtaken Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger — all of which are Facebook owned — in downloads, even in the U.S.

Some believe that personal information shared with TikTok is not secure. In 2020, former President Donald Trump called on the company to sell off its U.S. operations or be banned. The app’s popularity nevertheless grew during the pandemic, when it became the leading download in Europe, South America and the U.S.

Joe Biden, Trump’s successor, withdrew the presidential executive order, but uncertainties remain elsewhere. While The Financial Times reported on Sunday that ByteDance has revived plans to go public in the coming months, a spokesperson told Nikkei Asia on Monday that the article was “inaccurate,” insisting the company has no current plans for a stock market listing.

China’s Likee, a TikTok competitor, creates short videos that many companies use for marketing, and it ranked eighth in the latest global download league.

At the start of 2021, WhatsApp announced that it would share messaging data with Facebook relating to interactions between users and companies. Although WhatsApp promised to protect information about communications between friends and family, some users moved over to other apps.

Bucking that trend, Telegram, a messaging app originally developed in Russia but now based in Germany, moved up to seventh place. Users can adjust the settings to delete messages automatically after a specified period. The app was a particular hit with protesters in Hong Kong and Thailand who wanted to operate under the state radar.

Users have previously been mostly guided by the convenience and ease of use of free social media, but privacy has become more of a concern lately. “Companies’ approach to handling data will become a deciding factor in consumer choices,” Shinichi Yamaguchi, an associate professor at the Center for Global Communications, told Nikkei.

Discord, a voice calling app that moved up to seventh place, has benefited from people’s need to isolate during the pandemic. The app is popular among gamers for chatting when online, and has been funded by Sony Group. Social media services have primed the pump for greater outside investment and corporate involvement.

Domestic apps dominate the China market where many from overseas are closed out. Three in China’s top ten are for short video posting, including Douyin, the predecessor of TikTok, which ByteDance still provides in China.

Douyin is popular for music, dancing and general entertainment content. Douyin Volcano Edition — also from ByteDance — provides videos from everyday life, including people falling down in the street and other mishaps.

Among newcomers, Little Red Book (RED, Xiaohongshu) was fifth most downloaded. It combines social networking with e-commerce, mainly cosmetics, fashion, dietary supplements and consumer goods. In China, word-of-mouth is important, especially among women. “I read reviews of cosmetics and other products every day,” said a female user in Beijing.

Online networking is particularly popular among Generation Z, or Zoomers, born in the second half of the 1990s. Soul, the number ten app, uses artificial intelligence to analyze users’ personalities through psychological tests. It then matches them to others with similar profiles. A major difference from traditional matchmaking services is that people are not selected based on a picture of their face. Consumers use the app for matchmaking or simply to find new friends.

Short videos have gained popularity in other parts of Asia. Snack Video, an app from China’s Kuaishou, was the sixth most downloaded in Asia-Pacific. Its main feature is live commerce — a combination of video broadcasting and online shopping. Companies have used it to grow sales during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Line, which is especially popular in Thailand, was pushed out of the global rankings by strong competition from new players. In Japan, however, it moved from number two to the top spot. Line is working to make itself a super app by enhancing its payment settlement function.

During the pandemic, Osaka prefectural authorities used Line for vaccine reservations, and it is widely used by other local governments in Japan to disseminate information, making it increasingly a part of the infrastructure of daily. However, a subcontractor in China was discovered to be able to view Japanese user data, making security more of a concern.

The U.S. matchmaking app Pairs was originally developed in Japan, where it rose to eighth place. With the pandemic ongoing, it offers a remote dating function that was added in April 2020 to enable people to maintain romantic links from home. “I started using the service because I couldn’t have any real encounters with people during the pandemic,” said one male office worker in his twenties.

“The total viewing time for TikTok in the U.S. and U.K. is longer than that for YouTube, and short videos will continue to attract attention,” Chuzen Kin, marketing manager at App Annie, an app market intelligence company, told Nikkei as he reviewed trends. “In terms of content, music and comedies are becoming more popular.” Vocal social media is also on the up, with Clubhouse taking off in Japan and the U.S. in early 2021.