In Q2 2019, our business will launch a platform-anchored hardware product, named Loci, engineered for both consumer and enterprise markets. As a company built on partner-first go-to-market strategy, we are looking for partners across Africa.
Our solution will work in the following sectors: security, transportation, logistics, and general mobility. This product is coming out of a real market friction I faced when I visited Nigeria in October 2018. So, we do think many are experiencing the same challenges. Hence, we want to hit the market with a solution, using available proprietary technologies we have already developed in Zenvus.
Loci is a new subsidiary in our business. On pre-production design, we achieved 50% more affordable product when benchmarked with competing products.
If you want to become a Loci Partner, to distribute and sell this product, email our team here. They will send documents on Loci and the partner requirements. Our model is that it will be a very rewarding business for those that can get in.
You must have the capacity to place a minimum of $10,000 worth of Loci order. We are a partner-driven business which means we depend on partners to sell our products while we focus on the engineering and production.
Plans for my upcoming visit to London have been concluded. A major U.S. bank with London office had invited me to give two speeches on the same day to two business units of the institution. The talks are separately titled “The New Merchants of Sub-Sahara” and “Africa’s Cambrian Moments Are Here”. This is a big promotion for our business, made possible by a fellow World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. As YGLs do, we congregate to discuss global events, usually via teleconference calls. The best time to audition for a job is when there is no job!
Unfortunately, I will be unable to meet our African community as I had planned. I will not even pass a night in London. I will fly into the city and fly out the same night to catch a company dinner (the next day) in Lagos which I will deliver the oration. I apologize for those already planning meetups in London. The event was shifted to occur before the election and that changed everything.
I am on my way from Lagos to U.S. I sneaked in few days ago. While in South Africa on a UN event, a wire came that our team must arrive urgently. I made it back to U.S. and flew the next day to West Africa. In this short trip, I noticed a new location where a company can send team for Business Retreat: Epe Resort. Though it is not really top-tier at global standard, the ecosystem is just good for people to focus on big thinking, and the budget is fair especially for SMEs. Do not go to Dubai: use Epe Resort if you want a simple change in environment.
Meanwhile, our team will be in Nigeria in February and March working in companies. Let me know if you have some business frictions we can help. Email our community manager here.
This is it – Samsung Galaxy 10. It is a new basis of competition as it created a parallel pioneering foldable built. Apple has a wake-up call right now. This phone is nothing but cheap – it is fashionista at another level.
I got the notes and questions: how can you posit that Nigeria is the best place to invest as I noted in the piece on my BBC interview? My answer: few things work in Nigeria, and that means it has the biggest problems to be solved in the world. Provided that is the state, we can extrapolate that latent opportunities abound in the nation.
Getting ready for BBC interview – the stage is set. I will share insights on the following: (1) Nigeria is the best place to invest. (2) Entrepreneurial capitalism is unlocking new vistas in Nigeria, seeding new possibilities in this Cambrian moment. (3) My entrepreneurial journey and building a diversified digital conglomerate. If you are looking for someone with undeniable optimistic exuberance about Nigeria, you have seen Ndubuisi Ekekwe.
Good people, if someone asks you to come up with a business plan in London, I am not sure you can find something you can fix easily. I mean an open friction which has not been effectively managed.
Fix a Friction: Frictions exist in markets and because of those frictions we have the need for companies. Those frictions are the market needs which companies are created to solve and fix. As an entrepreneur, your main job is to find frictions which are prevalent in markets and which affect many people and companies. For example, in Nigeria, we have a friction in the inadequacy of electricity. It affects many people and companies and certainly something that needs to be fixed.
But in Nigeria, there are acres of diamonds everywhere. From our food systems to our healthcare systems, from our road systems to our power systems, from our educational systems to our aviation and indeed everything, you see frictions everywhere. That is why Nigeria is the best place to invest. And that does not mean that it is the easiest place to make money.
For that last one, talk to Dangote, Ovia and Elumelu to help you. All I know is that Nigeria has latent opportunities to mint new generation of business leaders who can be bold to fix all these challenges we have. Our nation remains a place where women die during child births needlessly because the closest hospital to her is about 3 hours away.
The good Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe is right. I just returned from a trip to Nigeria and the unsolved problems I saw there were amazing to me. Capital is often but not always the main impediment.
With big problems do come big opportunities. And Nigeria is a land of great opportunity. Ironically, the very reasons that these massive opportunities (problems) exist are the problems (opportunities) themselves: the difficulty of doing business, the infrastructural problems, all the things that scare your typical cookie cutter out-of-the-can investor. Indeed these problems are a real barrier to entry, and they make it difficult to engage or be interested in that country of 200 million people (400 million by 2050).
I expect our investors to be pleased when I debrief them on my trip. Nigeria has enormous potential, and each of those pesky problems is a great opportunity waiting to be seized.
When no unsolved problems remain, that is called heaven. It also means one is physically dead. While still alive and breathing, we have opportunity to solve the problems that make life difficult for others. And that’s how to live.
The fastest growing market in the African consulting sector is now Digital Transformation. This includes amalgam of many things including pure digitization of processes, integrating digital tools in marketing, and preparing data for the AI future. Yet, where you can command more respect and add the greatest values (which means close deals faster) is figuring out how your frameworks, or other people’s frameworks modified by you, can help Boards and Executive Management find growths. Those frameworks are the key elements of Digital Transformation, and are the most impactful of all services.
If you run a consulting practice, the most important phase in any engagement is understanding the customer. If you miss that element, you would struggle all through the engagement. To understand a customer, you have to approach everything with a learning spirit irrespective of what you think you are. The fact is this: the customer understands and knows his business more than you.
In my practice, drawing from one of my Harvard Business Review articles, I try to help clients figure out how to embrace the ICT utilities like Facebook and Google over seeing them as enemies, and from there architect growth models to unlock new markets and territories. In the consumer business, digital business development that does not look at these ICT utilities may not be optimal because Facebook is a business continent, and Google is another, even though your Geography class may not list them as among the planets!
Always remember that being #1 in a dying industry is an existential threat even though you are #1. So, in a sector, if a company is #1 but not growing and other competitors are exiting, there is nothing to smile about. You are not out-competing them. Rather, they are exiting because the sector is shrinking. If you do not have the antenna to see the trajectory, you will be in trouble very soon.
Our model is to use indicators to figure out how change happens. Yes, most times, it is technology that is transforming sectors, triggering structural dislocations, and shifting values to new class of entities. For example, as Facebook and Google dominate, media companies struggle. So, to help media entities, you must understand that competition within traditional peers is not the challenge anymore: you have to see the flanks to come up with a winning strategy.
Digital transformation is a major shift and it is where the money is right now. Do not focus on the operational aspect – see the strategic phase where you come up with roadmaps to enable CHANGE.
The appropriate way to understand the phrase could be ‘digital TRANSFORMATION’, the transformation is the real deal, the digital is just the enabler.
It largely requires a mind shift, not really about digitizing processes and operations, and most times wasting money on unusable technologies.
So for any digital transformation to make some substantial impact, it must be approached from the strategic level, not tactical/operational, the latter has very little to do with senior management, who ordinarily must lead the transformation journey. Communication is key, especially for organisations with identifiable culture.
Driving the change is never straightforward, because getting the workforce to change from what used to work or how they have always done things, is never easy; you must be able to convince them that the new way is the right way.
