The Ingressive Pathway
“Yes!!! It is time to expand to Africa. Nigeria is our first stop guys”. Ed told Frank the VP of Marketing in a Silicon Valley-based Bluechip Company.
Data analysed from recent market survey reaffirmed Lagos as the biggest technology ecosystem in Africa valued at $2billion, an economy significantly bigger than that of Kenya east Africa most dynamic country; that is the first market to tap into on our African quest. But recent information showed that Nigerian ease of doing business is tedious ranking 146 out of 190 countries, so how can we reach out to the right people? Also, our core is technology and the Big 4 might not be the best approach because that is not their demarcated space or area of focus.
Ingressive, a market entry firm started by doing market research for International partners/corporates in 2014. The African tech space is highly dynamic and widely untapped, Lagos looks to have caught the attention of international software companies and tech talent harvesters but according to statistics only about 25 million Nigerians around the urban cities are connected to the internet so what about the over 175 million people that has the youth percentage of about 70% and statistic show that Africa will have 50% of the world working for population by 2050.
The market entry market was mapped out for Ingressive as they worked a strategy on how to spread resources from the central city of Lagos to other localities and this led to the market entry opportunities for International tech companies to integrate Africa into their business strategy using the CSR model to sponsor communities in cash and educational materials.
This is happening already in 92 universities in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda.
Most times the power and hunger of a startup is their ability to develop and accumulate capabilities in order to compete with a niche in the marketplace. The new bunch of entrepreneurs are building moats in their categories and breaking down the complex inefficient approach of conglomerates, multi complex companies.
Also, with the level of unemployment in sub-Saharan Africa and Nigeria having about 23% as at Q1 2019, entrepreneurship is the only model that can create the number of jobs that will stop insecurity and the escalation of poverty.
The Entrepreneurship Development Group was set up to provide business knowledge for techpreneurs and students. The goal of the pipeline is to create a pan African structure that enables people to be a complete solution provider from a bunch of code/idea.
Ingressive has created a model that has shown exponential growth for their partners and corporate clients and the strategy has also created a base that can be used as a Pan African distribution channel. A look at their organisational chart showed an interesting figure that they practice an equal gender talent organisation to ensure adequate representation equity and a balanced workforce of 50% male and 50% female in their workforce and 25% their pre-series portfolio companies having female founders this is a new way to show the next mission to equally distribute opportunities and access to resources for all.
Corporations that have used Ingressive expansions strategies have gone on to record outstanding rounds of series funding and also outright buyout to join global giants like Microsoft.
Doing business in Africa can be uncertain and unpredictable because of the lack of corresponding data and analysis but the company has decided to take that on from strategy to execution by reporting refined data and level by level growth analysis with suggestions handled by experienced technology community partners.
A business expansion manager will ask the question of how do we access the continent? Bureaucratic measures are long and business-crippling.
But an interesting fact is Ingressive has created a gateway into Africa by starting out with visas applications, airport pickup, itinerary set up, market access and security.
I share the same belief with Aliko Dangote that “The opportunities in Nigeria are enormous. But we need to have consistency in government policies to sustain and build to a level of scaling and owing all components of our growth ”
From the upsurge of African innovation and technology advancement, we are now at the top front of deciding what happens to us in the next 50 years.