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

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 […]

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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