What just happened here? “Cristiano Ronaldo’s removal of Coca Cola bottles at a Euro 2020 press conference on Monday was followed by $4 billion being knocked off the company’s market value. Ronaldo was speaking at a press conference ahead of Portugal’s game against Hungary on Monday when the soft drinks were placed in front of his seat. The 36-year-old removed them from view and said that people should ‘drink water’ instead. The gesture coincided with a significant impact on Coca Cola’s market value,” notes the theathletic.

Coca Cola is one of the world’s leading advertisers but here it used its money to pay for an own goal (as in football). Yes, when a football god scored against you, in the minds of a generation, you could be imperiled.

Coke is not a bad product. People need to consume EVERY legal product moderately and in order. Yet, Coca Cola needs to understand that with virality in this age, change will not come from politicians and governments, but through conscious efforts by companies to do the right things.

So when a brand is worried that its money could be used to destroy its value, you will see CHANGE. Coke has served the world but it is evident that it is losing the next generation; it should worry about that.

Yesterday was amazing as a Microsoft manager took us to an excursion on strategy and business execution. Tomorrow,  Aderinola Oloruntoye is going to focus on Design Thinking. The ex Digital Transformation & Innovation Lead in West Africa for software giant, SAP,  brings the connection between design and innovation.

And the most amazing: an European bank which sent staff to Tekedia Mini-MBA asked Tekedia to drive a project, and he delivered with the team for the Institute – thanks Aderinola for making this small school stand before giants. Then on Saturday, I will close the week with “Building Great Companies and Brands”.

• Thur, Jun 17 | 7pm-8pm WAT | Design Thinking – Aderinola Oloruntoye, Dean, Workforce Group
• Sat, Jun 19 | 7pm-8.30pm WAT | Building Great Companies and Brands – Ndubuisi Ekekwe.

Zoom links in the Board.

Tekedia Institute school.tekedia.com >> Learn from the best.

Fatura, a Cairo-based B2B ecommerce marketplace, has secured $3 million in a pre-Series A round led by Sawari Ventures and Arzan Venture Capital. The deal also included Egypt Ventures, EFG-EV, Cairo Angels, and Khwarizmi Ventures. In July 2020, the company raised an unknown amount of money in a seed round.

With this financing, Fatura will be able to expand its services beyond e-commerce and digital financing, allowing it to optimize the interchange of products, money, and information in the B2B environment while concentrating on ease and user experience.

“There is a great opportunity in the B2B space in Egypt, that is growing as the players are becoming digitally mature and ready. Collectively, the digital B2B players in the FMCG space capture less than five per cent of the market and there is a long way to go. Our conviction is to stay asset-light, be inclusive to all the industry stakeholders and to attract the best on-ground acquisition force across the country,” Hossam Ali, Fatura’s CEO, said in a statement.

Fatura has established a solid basis and infrastructure for monetizing its data and services. New services to serve the many actors in the company’s ecosystem, such as manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers, as well as diverse digitization projects with an emphasis on digital payments and regional development into new markets, are among the company’s future ambitions.

“Fatura’s existing infrastructure has enabled them to expand their offerings to new customers,” commented Hany Al-Sonbaty, Managing Partners at Sawari Ventures, adding that, “the team has demonstrated that they have the vision to identify new opportunities and the prowess and agility to implement and deliver. We are excited to become part of their journey.”

“Being part of Fatura’s success story is exciting for us. The FMCG industry is in need of Fatura’s product, which will solve many challenges faced by small retailers. Also, its fintech angle complements the core product and enables retailers to scale their business further with less working capital constraints,” Hasan J. Zainal, Managing Partner of Arzan Venture Capital said.

Khwarizmi Ventures recently participated in Egyptian ecommerce logistics startup, Bosta’s $6.7 million Series A round.

The B2B marketplace began in late 2019 and has already exceeded 1 billion EGP in annual GMV, and that’s just in the FMCG industry. The Fatura smartphone app links wholesalers and manufacturers with retailers across a wide range of sectors. The company has been functioning in the FMCG market and is now experimenting with other industries.

The firm has also expanded its reach to more than 25,000 stores and 500 wholesalers and manufacturers throughout 20 governorates, exchanging more than 10,000 SKUs in the last year. Fatura also pierced the surface of financial services by offering digital lending with a focus on retail financing, with plans to expand its retail financing offerings in the near future.

The Director, Information Technology Department, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mrs. Rakiyat Mohammed, stated at the banker’s committee meeting that the apex bank will be launching a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) before the end of 2021: “As I said, before the end of the year, the Central Bank will be making special announcement and possibly launching a pilot scheme in order to be able to provide this kind of currency to its populace.” This follows a statement by the bank governor a few weeks ago: “Under cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, Nigeria comes 2nd while in the global side of the economy, Nigeria comes 27th. We are still conducting our investigation and we will make our data available.”

Across the world, central banks are exploring the options of creating digital currencies. Just like we moved from cowries to paper notes over centuries, it does appear that digital currency is going to be part of the history of this generation. As US moves with e-dollar and China ramps up e-yuan, Nigeria is making sure that it is not being left out.

“We have currency in two forms in Nigeria as of now, there are the notes and there are the coins. So the Central Bank currency is to be the third form of money which means just as we have electronic money, digital money is not new in Nigeria. Just as we are about the third or fifth in the whole world as far as advancement in the use of digital money is concerned. So this is going to compliment the coins and cash that we have. The Central Bank digital currency will just be as good as you having cash in your pocket and even as you have the cash in your pocket, you are going to have the cash on your phone.

“We all know how money has to travel for someone to send money from Nigeria to abroad and it is huge money in Africa. We also know that a recent report by EfiNA was that our target was to achieve 80% financial inclusion. We are about 60 percent and at the rate at which we are going, we are not going to meet this target. Central Bank digital currency will accelerate our ability to meet this target.”

But as this redesign happens, expect pressure on the commercial banks. You know what? If CBN has these digits, they can bypass commercial banks to reach the end users. So, government policies can be managed directly by the central bank, and there is also a concern that some customer deposits will now sit in the central bank’s vault instead of commercial banks’.  Yet, we do not know fully what we do not know, but one thing is evident, Nigeria is on the right path in reducing financial transaction frictions, and could possibly advance financial inclusion at scale. China is also showing that digital currency could remove ghost workers with the launch of its blockchain-enabled salary payment system: “China has taken a major step in its central bank digital currency (CBDC) tests. The country just debuted and successfully launched blockchain-enabled salary payments with digital yuan at Xiong’an. According to the official website of the Xiong’an New Area, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has successfully integrated the country’s first on-chain wage payouts in the digital yuan”.

The biggest threat from digital national currencies is sucking deposits from commercial banks. In other words, most customers will have to open bank accounts with a central bank, and that means moving some of their deposits from banks to the apex bank where the digital currency is domiciled.

A payment system which offers a seamless way to make transactions sounds interesting – and will thrive, even though it has no way to magically boost the strength of Naira. The opportunities could be for those companies which will play well at the edges of the smiling since the central bank will be the de facto operator at the center. The future of banking could possibly go to tech firms which offer banking services!

And as that happens, expect a phased disintermediation of 1st generation coins like Bitcoin as e-yuan, e-dollar, e-naira, etc evolve. Now, you know the risks!

The Challenge Ahead for Banks As Fiat Currencies Digitize