StoryTime... About Chaperone

Today my boss and I knocked off at 2am and oh! what a joy!

Chaperone will turn 3yrs in operations in Oct this year. I bow my knee to every single entrepreneur, known and unknown, who have started and grown businesses on their own. I could never comprehend how they do it. This thing takes a village and far too many sleepless nights.

Anyway, while doing what we're doing, we considered slightly the ride we've been on. I know how we got here, we've worked insanely hard to sail this ship. The day we launched, October of 2020, we did so just to comply. The Regulator's grace was out and we all stayed at the office with the development team past midnight just to keep them company.

We bought lots of chicken and two bottles that popped so we could scream when our test transactions succeeded.

The next couple of days, we had M1,001.00 in our system. We were so excited because it validated our business for us.

People would deposit funny monies and withdraw them just to confirm that indeed we do what we say we do.

I remember tracking M40.00 that some sweet lady deposited at our office. She left and went to withdraw M35.00 from an agent accross the road.

It was exciting to see the deposit, our fees, the agent's cut, the withdrawal and the balance all in such a small sum. About two months later, we realised we, the employees, should be our own clients so we can experience our service ourselves. We had ops meetings every Thursday to discuss our challenges and possible solutions in detail.

Fast forward to today, over M90,000,000.00 worth of transactions have passed through our platform. We celebrate this with joy while also underwhelmed by it at the same time because what we've learned is that our potential is bottomless and it is a resounding fact that we should (will) do a lot more.

Now when we receive calls from unhappy customers, we do not panic. We've spent many nights preparing for them. Too many days of a dry and silent office. In those dry days and vigilant nights, we hoped for this. We worked our customer centricity muscles out and committed ourselves to making happy unhappy customers and win the hearts of those we manage to make smile.

You have no idea how happy the sound of a ringing telephone at the office makes me!

In our early days and still to this day, it was widely believed that we are a branch office of a foreign multinational. That belief was closely attached to the assumption that therefore we're well-funded and so we were ridiculed for not advertising enough.

That couldn't be any further from the truth as we're locally founded and very thinly funded. What makes me emotional and deeply respectful of my colleagues is that the M90m volume of transactions was attained with minimum resources. I consider our team with pride because do we not perform miracles! It's magical how we do what we do at Chaperone.

There's been many obtacles, the biggest of which was COVID. Well, and many others stories about which have not earned the right to be told as yet.

Generally business in Lesotho faces many challenges. Ours include ageism; the streets discouraging investors to trust us because "we're too young". People telling us we're going to choke on competition. Owing suppliers, fighting sabotage, key employees leaving, flooded office. The national doubt.

It used to break my heart to see how little to no faith Basotho have in themselves as a nation. The dream in this land proves to be to work for multinationals and not at all to build multinationals ourselves.

I love that SA and other countries' companies can come into Lesotho and make a killing.

But I love more the idea of a multinational from Lesotho even if that light is 10 years too far... even if we squint our eyes to see it.

Beyond these many challenges lie an immensely respectable Board of Directors whose leadership and business knowledge have been tried.

Our Captains!

Who dare not hold our hands but are committed to pointing us into the right direction everytime without failure. Who when it gets too hard, they bend over to afford us a moment to sigh. Them and our shareholders who surround us with faith and ambition.

Them and our clients whose trust in us inspires us to go harder, above and beyond because we're not alone. We do not do this on our own.

Together we're a village and this is our story.

April 2023, 26th.