TET PRESENTS: Nadayar Enegesi

 

 

When I first started this new chapter on The Eféctive Times over a year ago, I never imagined that I would be interviewing the Nadayar Enegesi; a man of multiple talents and skills sewn into the very fabric of his highly entrepreneurial DNA. But here we are.

In speaking with him, it was clear that his success was certainly not an accident but one that was the perfect combination of grit and serendipity. These are important factors, especially when dealing with the unforgiving and harsh realities of the business landscape in Nigeria.

In 2019, after leaving Andela, Enegesi co-founded ‘Eden Life’ app with Prosper Otemuyiwa and Silm Momoh, venturing into the domiciliary sector. The app allows users to have an on-demand concierge service where they can book for assistance depending on their domestic requirements. As it stands, Eden’s services includes housekeeping, food delivery, laundry and personalised gifts. Set up as a subscription business model, for as little as ₦20,000 (£38) a month, customers can be afforded the luxury of not having to worry about doing chores.

The most conventional way that people obtain domestic help or as the Yoruba call it ‘omo odo’ is by usually hiring a (young) impoverished individual. An estimated 200,000 people are a part of this economy. This often leads to complications when there is no standard process of regulation.

We must be honest with ourselves - as Nigerians we do not have the best customer service. Nigerian vendors are notorious for compromising on quality of their products/services and tend to lack great interpersonal communication when dealing with customers. Enegesi having noticed the opportunity in fixing this problem says, “We know domestic services in the continent are broken. It is very difficult to get great service – we want to make it easy for people to get great service.”

The start-up’s demographic are upper middle-class Nigerian professionals who account for 2.5 million of the population. After a long day’s work and going through what feels like the Kamuku Forest trying to navigate out of the jungle that is Lagos traffic, it must be the epitome of success for one to be able to put their feet up once they get home. And for others, it could be the added benefit of being able to allocate more time on their side-hustles that will inevitably maximise their potential.

On average, Nigerians spend 30 hours a week in traffic which obviously is a result of the dreadful transport infrastructure in the country. Nevertheless, thanks to Enegesi and his team, Eden’s solution is on the right path to alleviate the contributing stressors that are part and parcel of living in a metropolitan city like Lagos.

Though Enegesi has much to be currently proud of in his career, it would be a glaring omission for one to mention his name and skirt over his previous achievements as the co-founder of the £500m tech recruitment monolith that is Andela.

After earning his Computer Science and Business Bachelor’s degree from the University of Waterloo, Canada in 2013, he hopped on a plane the following year back to Nigeria. Once he landed, he became the director of learning and development, where his role was to oversee the recruitment and training of the junior software developers.

Even though it wasn’t his first foray in entrepreneurship, Enegesi says his experience at Andela made him realise the importance of, “doing something that is going to make a dent.”

One of the great things about business is that when you have the right people around you, you grow together. His fellow co-founders Jeremy Johnson, Christina Sass, Ian Carnevale, Brice Nkengsa and Iyinoluwa Aboyeji have all gone on to excel further in their individual ventures and more importantly, continue to be supportive of each other’s ventures.

Similar to how over in the US they have the well-known Paypal Mafia which consists of the Paypal co-founders, I think it’s safe to say that Nigeria also has replicated that same formation with Andela.

The years of experience that Enegesi and his co-founders have accumulated provides them with the increased advantage of succeeding in subsequent projects.

In talking to Enegesi there seemed to be an acknowledgement of the fortunate position of being able to secure such a significant role as an individual in his early twenties. “Someone who doesn’t have a privileged background and does not have that network cannot get access to that level of capital to get started.” 

It is a very different outcome for most students in Nigeria today who come out of university with little to no job prospects.

And if that’s not enough stress, they have another (unnecessary, in my opinion) hurdle to overcome which is NYSC (National Youth Service Corps). This mandatory government programme to curb tribalism which was started in 1973 after Nigeria’s Civil War means that graduates must complete one year of service before they are then able to formally join the job market. During the graduate’s time as a civil servant, they earn a very low salary of ₦30,000 (£56) a month. And unless they studied medicine, a majority of graduates are assigned teaching positions irrespective of what they studied for their degree.

Probably the most public secret amongst corpers is that many a times students pay other corpers to sign the NYSC register on their behalf. This is to make it seem they have attended their post of duty so that they can receive their abysmal wages. Their living quarters are also known to be in subpar conditions. The obvious solution would be for students to gain skills that would maximise their potential on the job market. And even though we are seeing the simmering of a tech revolution in the country, Enegesi says, “every problem is an opportunity. We’re literally just in Chapter 1 as far as tech and ecosystem goes.”

As Africa’s youngest nation with an average age of 18 this is an issue that is dear and near to Enegesi’s heart. In 2018 he wrote a Medium post for Nigeria’s 58^th Independence Day, where he said: “Our youth are talented and hardworking, but they are also disenchanted because our country has failed to provide them with the opportunities to convert their brilliance into a desirable quality of life.”

The difference between a child being educated or not should have nothing to with their parents’ bank balance. It is in the country’s best interests that their citizens are both educated and employed.

The depreciation of the Naira since 2016 has also been a catalyst of the current recession. In addition, the coronavirus pandemic has caused there to be a 14% rise in unemployment. The combination of these economic downturns makes employers reluctant to hire new candidates.

Many young people have lost faith in the ability of a country like Nigeria to operate on meritocracy when its past is tainted with nepotism and oil oligarchs painting corruption and monopoly as the gateway to riches. There’s no denying that Enegesi and other entrepreneurs like him have helped lay the foundation and script for other aspiring founders to follow.

A free market exists with the purpose of fostering innovation within a nation. And that is what Nigeria desperately needs.

In the last few years, Nigeria has seen an explosion of entrepreneurial endeavours amongst young people, including people from the diaspora who have returned to Nigeria to assist in stimulating the country’s economy.

The poor business infrastructure in the country is why many start-ups de’ end up with K leg. As it stands, 80% of businesses fail in their first year in Nigeria and it makes scaling a business hard. Simple things such as electricity and internet data, that people take advantage of in other parts of the world are a luxury here.  

There seems to be a common theme with every entrepreneur that I interview which is their frustration with the government. For the life of them they (and I) cannot understand why Nigeria’s leaders are not more proactive about backing innovation. When I asked Nadayar what he thought the reasons could be, he was very mindful in the way he worded his response. “Maybe people don’t want to invest in a future they will not be a part of. […] It’s very tough for me to answer why it’s not happening when the reason it should be happening is so obvious.”

In 2019, Enegesi and his former colleagues had the opportunity to meet Twitter CEO and co-founder, Jack Dorsey and Facebook’s CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. The presence of Big Tech giants gives the external validation that the country needs in signalling to investors overseas the abundance of talented founders that are working on scalable and exciting solutions within the country.

The injection of capital from international investors begged the question if Nigeria as one of the main emerging markets within Africa alongside Kenya, Egypt and South Africa, could stand on its own two feet. Whilst discussing this I was more optimistic that Nigeria indeed can indeed do it on its own but Enegesi was of the contrary view. “When you look at all the start-ups in Nigeria, most of the funding comes from outside of the country. Nigerian wealth is not investing in Nigerian tech development so when Mark Zuckerberg comes here, when Jack Dorsey comes here it is a big deal and important to us because it puts us on the map to be able to attract more of that foreign money because the people here aren’t doing it anyway. […] There’s a global shift with technology and we have to be a part of the conversation.”

His Eden Life team are alumni of Village Global accelerator programme and have also been backed by Samurai Incubate Africa, a venture capital firm based in Japan.

Talking of other success stories within the start-up landscape in Nigeria, Paystack’s acquisition by Stripe in 2020 immediately came to mind. Their £145m acquisition was the biggest to come out of the country. Speaking of this, Enegesi said, “It is very, very, very, inspiring. We’re all very excited. We’re all energised. The energy has changed here.” This happening was a reminder for other aspiring Nigerian founders that things like this can happen on home soil.

As the interview drew to a close it was finally apparent to me that the easiest way one can know what to attribute Enegesi’s success to is by observing his thought process. He’s a very careful listener and deliberate communicator who was quick to correct when he felt I was misquoting him. (I didn’t mind!)

Simply stated, he’s an executive who executes. In his words, he “understands how systems work.” Essentially the bottom-line of any engineer. And so, with that in mind, it will come as no surprise if in a few years’ time there’s a TechCrunch article announcing Eden’s exit.

For now, we wait. 

 

 You can find Nadayar Enegesi on Twitter. 

TET PRESENTS: Dr. Jonah Asiegbu

At the time of me writing this article, lockdown laws enforced by governments all over the world to curb the spread of the the global pandemic caused by the COVID-19 flu are starting to ease down.  In its place is the growing anxiety of the unforeseen consequences it will have on modern society. By and large it has already left its skid marks on the global economy, intensified mental illnesses and challenged personal and professional relationships due to extended periods of quarantining. 

Furthermore, in a world that is increasingly adopting social distancing measures as its new way of life, healthcare professionals now find themselves looking for alternative ways to effectively offer consultation and provide treatments to their patients. 

 

After I spoke to Dr. Jonah Asiegbu, I felt the weighed responsibility to impress upon the world the astronomical lengths that he is taking within the Nigerian health sector in making it more efficient and affordable for patients to receive primary healthcare through his telemedicine start-up, ‘First MedTrade Africa’. 

Focused. Visionary. Perfectionist. Those are the words that bounced around in my head in the hour and a half I had to dissect the brain (and heart) of Asiegbu. With more and more partnerships solidifying the growth of First MedTrade Africa, including German health provider ATOS Group, it was just as well that before he got his hands full propelling his rocket into the stratosphere, he could fit me in for an interview. 

According to Asiegbu, it takes a special type of person – a patriot - to say that they want to practise medicine in Nigeria: “When all of us leave Nigeria who stays back? Somebody has to change the narrative.” 

Despite his opinion, many of his doctor friends have left the country to escape working in a system that is teetering on its edges. Of the 75,000 registered medical practitioners in the country, 40,000 of them are currently practising overseas in places such as Saudi Arabia, Canada and the UK. And can anyone blame them? 

Average salaries for junior doctors in Nigeria currently stand at 200k naira a month (£500) with top medical consultants not even touching the £2000 (less than one million naira) mark at the end of each month. When one compares this with junior doctors in Canada earning on average £30k (₦14,375,475.00) yearly in salary it makes the decision to leave ones country much more easier.

The World Health Organisation suggests nations should have a doctor to every 600 people but in Nigeria there’s one in 4000. The deficit in medical personnel is frankly embarrassing if we are still claiming to be Africa’s Giant. 

Dr. Asiegbu’s journey to assuage the healthcare sector in Nigeria started from an early age. Born in 1985 in the southern state of Cross Rivers, after the death of his father when he was three years old, his widowed mother single-handedly took care of him and his four siblings. Having a mother who so emphatically and practically made sure that Asiegbu was the best he could be, he recognises her as the breeding ground for his success story both as a physician and entrepreneur. Even before he could hang a stethoscope around his neck, she was constantly telling him he was a doctor.

When discussing his academic background he cites his university’s chancellor as one of his earliest inspirations who whilst attending Igbinedion University, would invite the country’s influential figures such as former Head of State Ibrahim Babangida to give speeches to the student body. Seeing the fleet of cars and other symbols of wealth that frequented his campus sparked Asiegbu’s desire to want more for himself and his future. And those boyish ambitions have carved out the man he is today.

After finishing his first degree in 2013 he went on to do his internship at University of Calabar Teaching Hospital. It was during this period of his clinical rotations (including time in the neurosurgery unit) in 2014 that the seeds of First MedTrade Africa started being planted in his head, where he was able to experience first-hand the failings of the health system in Nigeria. Since gaining his full medical licence in 2016, he has worked in hospital wards which has helped him understand further the pain points of patients whilst attempting to receive treatment.                 

      

“It’s really pathetic down here […] We should have a system of schedule. The patient should know the time of his/her appointment. If I have an appointment for ten I should know I have an appointment for ten. […] The patient should not waste the whole day in the hospital. […] The primary health care centres […] is not functional as it’s supposed to be.”

Part of the main problem he believes, “the system that was the teaching hospitals or the tertiary sector that was planned in the sixties shouldn’t be the same manuscript we are using now.”

The WHO advises a health budget allocation between 14%-25% but Nigeria’s own is less than 10%. In a way it sabi that the government no get shame.

 

Rewind back to less than forty years ago and the state of healthcare in Nigeria looked promising. Before Nigeria gained independence in 1960 there had been a ten-year developmental plan drawn up a few years prior detailing objectives the nation intended to achieve in the subsequent years. At first, everything seemed fine. For every Nigerian citizen, medical treatment was free, and the government made it a point to invest in the health sector by awarding students with scholarships to travel abroad and study medicine. Once these students were finished with their studies they would come back to Nigeria and a job would be waiting for them. But the country’s over-dependence on oil precipitated the deterioration of the health sector starting in the 1980s. 

When someone decides to be an entrepreneur it is because they want to solve a problem and see a gap in the market. With Asiegbu he saw it was the bastardization of the health infrastructure, but what he could not foresee is the biggest biological warfare in contemporary times that will redefine doctor-patient relationships and will prove to be a blessing in disguise. “I never envisaged that there will be a pandemic like this. So now I think this is the birth of telemedicine in Nigeria.”

Even though Africa is the least affected continent with COVID-19 it is far from comforting given the still rising numbers and the lower standards of hygiene that is found in our part of the world. In Nigeria alone over 18,000 people have had the coronavirus with over 400 of them succumbing to the flu, including Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari in April. 

Simply put, the primary healthcare needs help. But it takes another type of person to say they want run a business in Nigeria. 

When Asiegbu decided to create his solution in 2016 thankfully he was in the fortunate position to be able to bootstrap the running-costs himself. Speaking of the start-up ecosystem in the country he says, “the bank interest rate is outrageous. There is no funding for start-ups. And that is where the brain drain is. Nigerians are one of the most intelligent people I’ve seen on Earth. When I hear what the young chaps, the ideas they have but there is no place to exhibit them. This is how countries grow […] The government does not provide any start-up funding. […] The major problem in this country is lack of insight and lack of funding.”

It would be a trip to Germany where he pitched his idea to a group of doctors, that would give him the greenlight to go full steam ahead with his project. Even though those close to him saw the potential in his vision as with anything great it always takes longer for the masses to catch up. 

From the price of a few agege breads, patients can receive online consultation with certified doctors from an extensive list of specialties such as dermatology, cosmetics, dentistry and cardiology.  To register, patients fill out a straight-forward registration form and book an appointment with their chosen doctor hassle-free. As well as being a B2C start-up, First MedTrade Africa also works as a B2B alongside hospitals by providing air transfer services for patients. In June, they launched an online medical market to provide hospitals with medical equipment to add on to their services.

Growing an online medical platform is all well and good but when half the population lives in rural areas and many of them do not have stable electricity talk less of a mobile phone with internet data, that can be a cause for concern. Nonetheless, this is a challenge that Asiegbu is ready to conquer too saying, “healthcare in Nigeria is an untapped goldmine.”

Another thing which Asiegbu wants to tackle with First MedTrade Africa is medical tourism. In a recent report Nigerians reportedly spend £970m yearly going overseas namely the UK, Middle East, United States and India to receive treatment.  When even the President has to fly abroad for treatment that is when we should think sometin de deh. “We need to reverse that history. There must be a reason for Nigerians working abroad have to come back home. We have to give them a comfortable environment to work and then we have to make sure they’re safe.”

He classes Donald Duke, Akinwumni Adesina, Sanusi Lamido as his inspirations also Dr Adeyemi Johnson who has been a pioneer in the cardiology field within the country.

It is important as Nigerians that we look up to people within our homes instead of looking at outsiders or we are just going to be forever stuck in this Stockholm syndrome perpetrated from colonialism. “Most of these patients travelling out of the country do not believe that there are physicians in this country that can take care of them. Because there are no data, there are no communities, there are no online platforms [to show this].” 

Even though First MedTrade Africa is an ‘indigenous company from Nigeria’ Asiegbu realises that there is more to be achieved when it is a collaborative effort. “First Med Trade is a bridge to the world meaning that we need those partnerships with international communities […] We have to learn from them, we need those partnerships to strengthen our back end, to be able to strengthen the African market.”   

Any entrepreneur that has ever had to grow a team knows that a company is only as good as the people who work in it. Asiegbu knowing this, he credits his core team Amina Ibrahim (COO), Princess Uzoukwu (CFO), Jude Joshua (ICT Manager) and Mfonobong Etokakpan (CMO) who have worked tirelessly to help breathe life into his vision. 

Now four years in and a soft launch earlier this year in February, he teases how much more is in store for First MedTrade Africa including a mobile application which is currently being developed. 

 

With only 24 hours in a day, Asiegbu makes every second count by starting at 2am in the morning and drinking strong black coffee (no milk, no sugar – just how I like it!).  Whilst he tries to work out how many cups of coffee he drinks in a day I hear Amina, telling him that he probably goes through more than five cups of coffee a day. Given his schedule, I am not surprised. 

And his hard work is paying off. With First MedTrade Africa on Nigeria-based venture capital firm VC4A portfolio, he has been able to gain the attention of investors who are looking to help raise his Series-A funding to support the expansion plans. Added to this, the start-up has also been accepted in Forbes 2020 Startup Digital Accelerator Program.

Whether First MedTrade Africa will stick around does not really matter. (Though I have a strong feeling it will). What matters is that it is becoming a part of an important discourse on how technology and digital platforms can positively contribute to health provision in Nigeria. 

You can find out more about FirstMedTrade Africa on their website.  Follow them on Twitter here.