LFP210 – West Africa’s First Digital Savings and Micro-Investment Fintech w/Odun Eweniyi co-founder PiggyVest

London Fintech Podcast

Africa is one of the lynchpins of Fintech’s origins – key origins being Zopa’s invention of P2P borrowing/lending in 2005 and mPesa’s mobile money+ in 2007. In this episode we take a look at more recent innovation in Nigeria, Africa’s largest country with a population of over 200 million. Piggyvest who launched in 2016 and whose only round to date was a $1.8m seed now have an amazing 4 million customers saving and investing via their app. In 2021 alone, the platform paid out over $582 million to its users

In this jolly episode (we could do with an injection of Nigerian positivity and humour in Europe right now) Odun, co-founder and COO, guides us through an introduction to Nigeria, her entrepreneurial career and the background to Piggyvest, the seminal role of a wooden box (!) as well as the future.

Africa in a world beset by American “wokism” is all too often seen at an insanely low resolution as if it were a place rather than a continent of a billion people and some 50+countries. We will cover Fintech in Africa per se in an upcoming episode but first we start with no generalisations just an great tale of entrepreneurship and a prime example of how the digital revolution in FS is worldwide, needing just the right amount of tinder and entrepreneurial spark to enable better deals for not just the over-served global zilllionaires but for every smaller sums of money – in Piggyvest’s case one can save and invest from as little as 20 US cents.

Topics discussed include:

• the three main peoples of Nigeria – Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa and their geographical distributions
• in total an amazing 180 languages are spoken in Nigeria
• broadly Christian in the South, Muslim in the North with many traditional religions/practices
• Nigeria is the world’s 6th largest country and 3rd largest speaker of English (education is all in English)
• the majority of tribal groups marry in-tribe although in Lagos there is more intermixing
• advice I was given in the early days of the podcast about Nigerians
• the spirit of Nigerians around the world
• Nigerians as having a great sense of humour unaffected by US/European puritanical wokism
• Odun’s career journey starting as an entrepreneur right out of university with some friends
• the origin story of Piggyvest amazingly involving New Year’s Eve, twitter and wooden boxes ( I joketh not)
• “digital wooden boxes”
• two weeks later the MVP for Piggybank, as was
• the change from Piggybank to Piggyvest once investment became added to the service list
• the background of Nigerian banking – high costs and hassle, low speed et al
• 22 banks in 2016 – all identical processes
• Nigerian millennials’ expectations
• difficulty/impossibility of young people getting loans
• Nigeria lacks a credit system – examples of how such a system works
• the economics of young tech folk in Lagos
• challenges of savings and investment
• investment minimum ticket size for traditional brokers was ~$2k
• acquiring a micro-finance licence
• the challenge of booting up a business from marketing to banking services
• the key role of a lead investor
• 700 users in the first year – painstaking start
• snowballing from focusing on great client service
• creating trust in a low trust environment
• the importance of retaining a human face and the founders being known
• never over-promised and so never under-delivered
• the development of FS regulation in the UK and in Nigeria
• challenges of engaging with regulators especially in a changing environment for FS
• the key to succeeding
• income distribution in Nigeria and the practical addressable marketplace for Piggyvest
• 47% of Nigerians live in extreme poverty by World Bank standards ($3 per day or less income)
• the narrowest submarket for Piggyvest is around 20 million people
• the key to growing using only a tiny amount of capital
• 70 staff at present
• dynamics of raising capital in Nigeria
• where does a successful West African Fintech expand next – geographically, within Africa by population, overseas in countries with similar economic characteristics?
• pan-African or emerging markets?
• what other successful Nigerian Fintechs have done
• Nigerians anywhere can use the app
• Piggyvest are currently raising a Series A
• shoutout for partners

And much much more

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