Resilience takes on new meaning in my conversation with Chioma Okotcha-Faloughi, Co-founder of Rivi (formerly PayHippo), whose entrepreneurial journey embodies the grit required to build transformative businesses in Africa.
Chioma never planned to become an entrepreneur. With her computer science background and experience spanning finance, policy, and education, she initially saw herself driving change through government channels. But a chance conversation about Nigeria's credit access problems led to co-founding PayHippo in 2019, where they moved from concept to customers in just weeks. After completing Y Combinator and raising $4 million, they were supporting thousands of small businesses with crucial financing.
Then came the storm. A devastating fraud attack combined with the departure of both co-founders pushed the company to the brink. "I had investors ask why I didn't just walk away," Chioma reveals. Her decision to stay and fight – while managing a newborn at home – ultimately led to one of Africa's most remarkable business pivots. Recognizing Nigeria's energy crisis following subsidy removals, she transformed the company into Rivi, financing clean energy solutions for businesses across the country.
What makes Chioma's story particularly powerful is her transparency about the darkest moments. From letting go 60% of her workforce to months without paying herself, she shares the painful realities rarely discussed in entrepreneurship circles. "Before this, I was just a nice tech founder. After hitting rock bottom, I became a fully certified entrepreneur," she laughs. Her advice to women building in Africa resonates deeply: "Stay the course, don't give up too soon, drill deeper."
Whether you're an entrepreneur, investor, or simply fascinated by Africa's business evolution, this episode offers rare insights into building purpose-driven companies that survive existential threats. Follow Rivi's continuing journey at @RiviHQ and subscribe for more stories of African business innovation.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
With more female entrepreneurs than any other
region in the world.
Women are at the heart ofAfrica's transformation.
Welcome to African BusinessStories, the show that amplifies
the voices of femaleentrepreneurs shaping Africa's
business landscape.
I'm your host, ekego Koye.
Here we explore bold ideas,strategies for scaling and the
(00:25):
realities of building businessesthat drive economic development
.
These stories will provideinsights into Africa's business
landscape, practical tools forgrowth and the inspiration to
navigate your ownentrepreneurial journey.
Be sure to subscribe, rate andshare.
Neural journey.
(00:52):
Be sure to subscribe, rate andshare On the show.
Today I chat with Chioma OkochaFaloyi, co-founder of Rivi,
formerly PayHippo, a Nigerianfintech company turned clean
energy finance innovator.
We talk about her childhood inPort Harcourt and her early
career journey.
Innovator.
We talk about her childhood inPort Harcourt and her early
career journey building astartup during uncertain times,
(01:12):
surviving co-founder breakups,raising over $15 million in
funding, and how her company isnow financing Africa's clean
energy transition.
It's a conversation about grit,reinvention and purpose-driven
leadership.
Let's get into it, hi, choma.
Welcome to African BusinessStories, hi.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Kato great to be here .
Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Thank you.
I remember that I met you likeso many years ago I think it was
like what, 2019 or something Ican't even remember now, 19 or
something I can't even remembernow and just randomly in Cairo,
and it's been just amazing tofollow your business growth and
your pivot, and I am superexcited to sit down with you
(01:54):
today and learn more about yourbusiness and how you've been
doing over the years.
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Thank you.
Thank you, I do remember Cairo.
I think it was after thepandemic or just before.
Oh was it.
Those years have merged intoeach other.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I know it feels like a long time.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I'm happy to be here and share the journey and what
we've been doing since ourcatch-up in Cairo.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
So I always start from the very beginning.
That's what I say.
One of my favorite all-timemovies is Sound of Music and I
love that line.
Let's start from the verybeginning.
So, just taking it back to yourchildhood, I know you grew up
in Potakot, which is in Nigeria,the oil capital of the country,
and I wonder what those yearswere like for you.
(02:40):
Were you a shell kid?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I was born in the mid-80s and my parents, our
family, was based out of Papakot.
My dad was in the oil and gasindustry.
My mom was a teacher.
She said she's a teacher forlife.
So I should say she is ateacher.
And so I grew up in quite asheltered small community of
(03:10):
trusted friends, family, strongfamily values.
And then I would say having amother as an educator was also
incredible in the sense of herbeing very specific on just
character, building, confidence,the small minute things as well
as the actual math and English.
So it was a great.
I look back with so muchfondness and a lot of
thankfulness to have grown upalmost in a sub-urban, like a
(03:32):
small urban community, and madeall my mistakes, learned a lot
of lessons, built myselfinternally before being thrown
out into the world.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Wow.
So what would you say if Iasked what was one of your
fondest childhood memories?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
what would you say that is there is so many, and I
think anyone listening today whohas grown up in PH would agree
we had a club where we would goswimming, riding bikes, tennis,
and it was great because youwould see your friends.
Our parents trusted the clubsto drop us there early in the
morning and maybe pick you upearly evening, and so you had
(04:11):
the whole day just being free.
There was a lot of green, lesspolluted and just running around
popcorn and suey and all thelife.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So what did you think you would be when you were
young, growing up around the oiland gas space?
Did you think that would formpart of your future at all?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Actually not In engineering.
My dad was certainly throwingthe engineering joke like oh,
you're so good at math, I thinkyou should be an engineer.
However, I really wanted to bea doctor.
I was obsessed.
And I had this very clear focusthat that was what I was going
to do from when I was like nineor ten, and medicine was it for
me.
I was on track, I just loved.
(04:53):
I'm not sure what about it, butmaybe again it was the 90s.
It was being a doctor the mostprestigious thing, I don't know.
But I was also pretty good withscience.
I liked, liked biology,chemistry.
I was a bit of a nerd, let'sjust say that now.
But then, unfortunately, my momhad an accident when I was about
13 or 14.
(05:13):
And I was around her quite alot and just helping her
navigate her healing journey,and it impacted me in a very
strange way.
I suddenly couldn't bear thethought of someone being in pain
, and every time she'd be inpain I would have the exact same
pain.
I'm not sure what it's called,but there's a name for it, and I
think it was just a lot ofempathy in the moment.
(05:34):
And I remember mom just sayingto me I don't think this
medicine is going to quite workout well for you.
Maybe you should look at otheroptions.
And so I sat with my dad and Iwas like, okay, now the
engineering thing sounds likethe next best option.
And so engineering came up,computer science came up, and
that's how I got out of medicineunfortunately.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
So you then went on to study computer science.
Okay, and what was that likefor you?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
It was strange in a little way because this was 2000
and I graduated 2001.
By 2002, I was in a Nigerianuniversity called Babcock
University and I was doing apre-degree program to study
computer science in my focus,from biology and just from
(06:24):
biology, right the human body,learning around that to being a
lot more focused with my mathand further math and all the
numbers and binary.
But I do remember that it wasthe coding.
Languages were very differentthen.
I forget.
I think it was basic, I thinkit was C sharp I think, at that
time, but it was very differentfrom what we're doing now with
(06:46):
Python and all the AI stuff.
But I liked it as well.
I think I'd say I was doingpretty well at school.
I had mixed my programs so thatI could graduate not just
knowing about computer sciencebut I was also going to go into
taking ACCA, which is like theaccounting certification, just
so that I also had a financeexposure at the time.
(07:07):
This wasn't a solo thought, itwas more.
Babcock was very good at makingsure you balance.
I think they built theuniversity system in a very
American way where you wouldhave your major and your minor,
and so I was there for about twoand a half years.
I was going into my third yearand I suddenly had this aha
moment that I wanted to leaveBabcock.
(07:30):
I just didn't think that I wasreally thriving there as a
person.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
My sister- was there and she was thriving.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
I didn't think I was, and so I decided I was going to
go to England, didn't have aconversation with my parents and
make this decision.
I was doing all my applicationsonline with my pocket money.
I did everything and then I gotmy admission letter and I
remember I went home thatChristmas and I said I'm not
going back to Babcock, I'm goingto start school in England in
(07:53):
September.
Mind you, I was on ascholarship in Babcock and to
this day I can't really see howmy parents transitioned from.
That is a crazy thought to okay, let's go.
All I do know is in September Iwas in England.
Um, and I have interviewed themcountless times like how did you
(08:14):
take your 16 year old thatseriously to make that sort of
decision on her own, and how didyou?
Speaker 1 (08:19):
trust it.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
They haven't really been very clear with the answers
.
That's how I found myself inEngland and I started my degree
all over again, so I went fromgoing to my third year to like
going to my first year ofuniversity.
But because I'd had auniversity experience locally, I
was mature.
I was really focused on what Iwanted to do and what outcomes.
I wanted to just experienceeverything about this new
(08:41):
environment and that's how Iwent to England for my degree
completion.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
So what did your career then look like?
Because I see that you've doneso many different things and I
just wonder what your initialcareer was when you completed
your degree.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yes, I have to give a bit of credit to the careers
lady at my uni.
When I arrived I said to her oh, I want to do the major minor.
Can I do accounting?
Because I was interested in alittle bit of finance and I
thought it was math, I likenumbers.
And I remember her saying ifyou have to do that, you might
have to completely change yourmajor.
And I was willing to.
(09:19):
I was like, OK, what does thattake?
And I remember she just lookedat me.
She said please do not do that.
Um, this is your undergrad.
Take this as your springboard.
Right, you'll come out here.
You've learned all thistechnical knowledge around
things.
You've got all this experience.
This is your springboard.
When you're done here, you canliterally fly and do anything
that you wanted to do.
And I kept that in the back ofmy mind.
(09:42):
So, so when I finished uni, Ireally wanted to work in the
investment banks.
I was applying to LehmanBrothers and I had interviews
and I still remember after myinterview was when Lehman
Brothers shot down.
I thought, oh, maybe this isthe time.
And unfortunately I did thatand I got into finance.
I would say finance more froman advisory perspective.
(10:05):
So I wasn't doing coreaccounting but more around
advisory working with.
I remember I did.
I worked with SMEs when I wasat the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
I did some revenue analysis witha company in the UK before I
moved back to Nigeria and thoseexperiences for me were very
fundamental One, just learninghow to work, which is obvious,
(10:28):
but two I think that's where Istarted to understand the
different landscapes, sounderstanding what the UK, what
culture was like, what the needswere.
And then coming to Nigeria forNYSE working and then seeing
where the problems were,opportunities were, challenges
were, and in that moment Istarted doing a lot of
volunteering and working withnon-profits locally on the
(10:49):
weekend and I had an aha momentwhere I said, okay, if I was
going to make change in Nigeriabecause we're always having that
conversation as Nigerians oneof the most effective ways would
be around policy.
I need to get into politics, Ican quickly change things faster
.
And so I went to grad schooland studied public policy.
Yeah, that's it aroundeducation.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Wow, so was that before or after your stint with
the Tony Blair Institute?
Oh, this was before.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
So I had the experience working in the stock
exchange and, oh God, I forgetthe other states that I worked
while I was in Nigeria.
And then I had this aha momentwhen I was in France.
I was exposed to capstoneconsulting.
So where you're working on realproduct and projects while
you're at school.
And I worked with the Frenchdevelopment agency.
(11:38):
I worked with the OECD postgrad school and, funny enough,
both projects were sort oflooking at Africa.
So with the AFD I was workingon, like a credit project,
public and private partnershipsin the southwest of Nigeria, and
with the OECD I was looking atWest African states, sahel and
(12:00):
West African states.
And so again I felt, look, everytime I left Nigeria, every time
I did something globally, therewas always this pullback into
solving like a lot of thechallenges that existed here and
what can I do here?
So when I was in grad school Iinterned with Tony Elumelu.
Funny enough, I've worked withboth Tony Elumelu Foundation and
(12:22):
he was very much around the.
He was building a conceptaround what does capitalism look
like in Africa and how can wemake sure that we're conscious,
we're impactful and we're justnot building businesses for
profit.
I set that up with the team,built the tenets of what that
would look like, went back tograd school, then came back and
one of the best experiences Ihad was setting up the Teach for
(12:45):
All network in Nigeria.
Yeah, so I set up Teach forNigeria with the CEO and founder
at the time, and the wholeconcept was how can we get more
Nigerians who are, who havegreat degrees, finish top of
their class, how can we get themto give back to the education
sector before maybe going off tomany other things?
(13:06):
Because one of the issues wehad in Nigeria was just that
death of quality teachers,unfortunately and so I did that
for two and a half three yearsand it was a fantastic
experience.
I worked in the north and thesouth west of Nigeria.
Again, education was theproblem.
So one of the ways that I'vealways framed everything that
(13:26):
I've done is what is the problemand what is the solution?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I'm providing.
So there you are, straight outof uni working in finance,
moving into policy, working inthe education space, and then,
at what point do you then decidethat entrepreneurship is the
path to go?
Speaker 2 (13:47):
I would say entrepreneurship chose me again.
Like I said, for being a wantedto be a doctor.
Since then, learning aboutcomputer science and all these
things, I never actually thoughtI was a business person.
I tried running a fewbusinesses in uni very easy,
small mom and pop type of thingsbut I never really quite got it
(14:07):
.
So for Pei Hippo, I left Teachfor Nigeria at the time and I
was very much into playingsports just playing flag
football in Lagos in the newcommunity and I had met my
co-founder because we wereplaying on the same team and we
were just having a conversationaround.
He's American and a Nigerianand we're talking about the good
(14:30):
things about Nigeria and thethings that need help and the
challenges.
And I shared my experience withthe public-private partnership
I had worked on as a consultantwhere I was looking at the
credit system in Nigeria andspecifically on that project I
was looking at housing creditcredit for sorry credit for
buying homes and challenges thatthat project experienced, and
(14:52):
he, on the other hand, had beenworking with a lending company
locally and just randomly, hesaid hey, I think there's
something here.
You understand the problemreally well.
I understand what the solutioncould be.
Let's start a company.
This was June 2019.
And by July 2019, we hadliterally started a company.
Our best customer either inJuly or August.
(15:13):
Yeah, it was pretty much likegoal.
There was no moment to beafraid.
There was no moment to sayactually I think this is a crazy
idea.
I'm going to jump in.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
So were you doing this as a side hustle or did you
leave your job to startPayHippo?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
So I had left my job at the time, but I still had my
eyes on policy and so I wasstill applying for jobs with the
Tony Blair Institute and withother organizations when this
came up.
And so I think even when Istarted it, I don't think I
fully realized the scale of themagnitude.
I still saw it as, again,there's a problem in front of me
(15:49):
.
I've been called up to dream upa solution to implement it, and
so I took that approach, notnecessarily okay, I'm going to
start a company.
So the second it got reallyserious.
I said, okay, this is now mypolicy drive.
I'm still going to make impact.
I'm still going to build aresponsible, profitable business
(16:10):
.
Rather than doing it from theseat of government, I'm going to
be attacking this from theprivate sector.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
That's fantastic.
Do you still play flag football?
I?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
used to.
I played until I had my baby in2022.
And then I came back and mylegs aren't just moving as
quickly as they should, I know,and everyone on the team feels
like they're 18.
I was like, if I get injured,I'm going to pay the ultimate
price.
I do want to go back, but I'veshifted my game to tennis now,
so I play tennis once a week,sometimes twice a week.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
So tell us a bit about PayHippo.
We're coming to what thecompany is today, but tell us a
bit about PayHippo.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
So PayHippo started with the big problem in front of
it, which was how do we ensurethat small businesses in Nigeria
can access credit?
It seems like a very easyproblem, but it's a huge one.
At the time, a lot of SMEsweren't successfully accessing
credit from your traditionalfinancial institutions and it
(17:10):
wasn't a deliberate move.
It was really from a space ofwe don't know how to underwrite
small businesses, we don't knowhow to verify who they are, we
don't know how to really keeptrack of their revenue, their
inflows and their outflows.
Some of these businesses aremoving a lot of money, have a
lot of customers, but they stillrun their accounting and
(17:31):
inventory system in a veryinformal way, and so the
traditional financialinstitutions were just like the
risk is too much.
Fortunately for us, I think wecame into the market where there
were other startups and otherinnovators who were tackling
different problems.
So you had startups who werelooking at an identity issue how
can we ensure that identitystreamlined across Nigeria?
(17:52):
People like UBC they are.
You also had people who werebuilding software for small
businesses to help them organizetheir transactions, organize
their accounting, in such a waythat now they have all the
documents and information thatthey need to access the
so-called credit.
So by the time we came into themarket and we said we're going
(18:13):
to build an automated under thatwould define a business owner.
Are you who you say you are?
They would also look at theirnumbers and say, based on what
you do as a business owner, areyou who you say you are?
They would also look at theirnumbers and say, based on what
you do as a business over thepast six months, 12 months, 24
months, this is how much moneyyou need.
This is how much money you canaccess on a financial platform,
(18:35):
and this is just to make surethat, as we're giving credit,
you also have the ability torepay what we didn't want to do
into the market was just throwmoney at business owners to
repay.
what we didn't want to do intothe market was just throw money
at business owners because, aswell, you don't want to increase
defaults where businesses don'tunderstand how credit works and
then they don't run intoproblems.
Right, remember, this is a newcredit environment, nigeria.
(18:56):
Nigeria is more like a heavypay up front type of was, more
like that you want to buy a car,you buy it upfront.
You're paying your rent, youpay upfront for a year.
We had never really built thiscredit system that I believe
small businesses needed toexpand to scale, especially if
you were a distributor or animporter where you're buying
(19:18):
things large scale, not havingaccess to funds could greatly
slow down or even extinguishyour business.
And so we came in and we builtthat system out and made it
automated.
But we were also able to feedother companies from what we
were learning, and one of themwas at the credit bureau that
now exists in Nigeria, justlearning from companies like us.
(19:40):
So you have a great customerwho's steady with their
repayments, they go on thisbureau as great with credit.
So you have a customer who'sdefaulting, they go on that
bureau as poor credit, so otherorganizations whether that's car
, fintech or housing creditsystems could also feed from the
bureau and say, hey, is thiscustomer credit worthy?
(20:03):
And so I think doing that from2019 to about 2022.
Just building up that systemwas incredible.
We supported over 35 000businesses, which is worth at
least um 17 million dollars theperiod, and I was just proud of
the fact that SMEs were finallygetting that recognition that
(20:24):
they're actually viablebusinesses that make up quite a
lot of the economy in Nigeria,quite a lot of the GDP, employ a
large percentage of the workingforce.
Not everybody works with thebanks or the oil and gas
industry, right, so it was goodto see that diversity happening.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
But you spoke about going from idea to
implementation in one month andnot having any time to be afraid
, which I think is very powerful.
Were there any things that youdid as a first-time founder to
shore up your own personalconfidence in starting this
business?
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I think to give myself a bit of credit.
I think I love challenges,right.
Show up your own personalconfidence in starting this
business, I think, to givemyself a bit of credit.
I think I love challenges,right.
So I think when someone orsomething is a no, I'm like, oh,
I want to figure this out.
But I think, in more real terms,having a co-founder at the time
was extremely valuable, becausenow it's almost like having a
free accountability coach, right?
(21:21):
Okay, so you're doing marketing, I'm doing finance, you're
doing PR, I'm doing tech.
You're able to complement eachother.
And also when one person mightbe feeling nervous, the other
person is like we've got this,let's go.
So I think in those initialdays I always say having a
business partner was definitelyone of the reasons why we were
(21:43):
able to move as quickly as wedid.
I don't know, maybe if I wasalone I might have said, oh, I
need to draw up a business plan.
Or now I need to email 10 of myadvisors to see if they think
it's valuable.
And time is going and yourconfidence is dying off and by
the time you're ready to start,you're so exhausted.
It's like I'm not doing thisanymore.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
So that definitely helped and I know that you guys
did the Y Combinator twice.
I read we applied twice.
What was the thinking behinddoing that and what were your
takeaways from that experience?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
wow.
It was a great experiencebecause when we started, none of
us my co-founder had built abusiness before, but we realized
that what we were doing waslarge scale One.
We were going to be playing inthe financial ecosystem without
as a new player, more so as astartup player, so not a new
player that's coming in with acommercial license to get a bank
(22:35):
right.
You're coming in and you'retrying to create a solution, but
you're going to be working inthis very heavily regulated
sector.
Also, we also knew that weneeded validation around our
idea, and by that I mean one ofthe things accelerator programs
or introducer programs providefor you.
They give you the space to test, to really think about your
(22:56):
business, to have otherentrepreneurs look at your
business and go maybe, oh, howabout this?
Have you thought about that?
Nobody ever tells you that's abad idea, but they're able to
scrutinize it in a way that getsyou thinking.
And I always say that one of thegreat things I had at Y
Combinator was I remember therewas a point where one of our
(23:17):
advisors said to us yourbusiness is dead.
What killed it?
And he wanted us to think aboutthat.
And honestly, I couldn't thinkabout that I was like what's my
business going to die and I'mgoing to put in everything.
What do you mean?
It's going to die, but it washelpful.
So we thought about everythingfrom co-founder split to running
out of cash to just simplyhaving a bad idea, and it helped
(23:40):
, helped us tackle.
If you get to that point, areyou also going to be bold enough
and brave enough to either shutit down or to pivot, or to do
it in a confident way?
So that was one of the things Ilearned from there, but another
plus was also just the exposure, I think.
As an African fintech at thetime, we were then exposed to
(24:02):
lots of investors in the US andacross the world who were
interested in what we were doingand who were very excited about
the African market.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
You then went on a year later to raise.
I think you raised a millionpre-seed and three million in
your seed round.
Am I correct with those numbers?
Speaker 2 (24:21):
That's correct.
Yes, that's correct.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Do you think that going through the accelerator
program was part of your successat raising so early?
Speaker 2 (24:29):
I would speak about this, but I will also give a bit
of a disclaimer, in the sensethat the ecosystem has matured
so much from 2020 or 2019.
There's so much that we'rethinking about now than what
we're thinking about then.
So, for instance, in 2020, 2021, there was a lot of heavy
conversation around revenue andaround your valuation as a
(24:51):
company, so everyone and theirmother was obsessed with these
metrics, whereas if you speak toreal established entrepreneurs,
your focus is really aroundprofitability and sustainability
.
Is your business making moneyto get the revenue?
So you make all this revenue,but when you take that all your
costs are you a profitablecompany?
(25:13):
Are you making losses?
So I think at that time, wewere super focused on the
revenue and we're doingincredible revenue, and I think
that also just comes from theNigerian market.
We have the market size.
Nigerians are entrepreneurs byheart, and so, if you're talking
about SMEs that are viable, wehad the customer base.
(25:35):
And so our numbers were greatand then obviously that was in a
way that got people excited.
So I do think doing the YCombinator program at that time
was definitely a springboard forus locally and also
internationally as well, and Iwould say it definitely
contributed to investors lookingat us.
So when you're at the YCombinator, you actually have a
pitch day and on that day it'sopen to investors to come in and
(25:59):
listen to your pitch, and sothose are people that I was in a
room with that maybe ordinarilyI may not have been able to get
to them so quickly, so I'd sayit helped.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Still on the Y Combinator.
Just a last question.
So what made the differencebetween I think you applied in
2020 and didn't get in, but thenyou got in 2021.
So for founders, femalefounders, who are listening to
this and contemplating thisaccelerator or any other
accelerator program, what madethe difference in those two
years for you?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I think the first time we applied, maybe we
weren't as ready and, by that,really understanding what our
business model was and reallyunderstanding how we're going to
make money.
And I still remember ourinterviewed with Michael Siebel
and he asked us in terms ofraising money for lending
business.
One of the questions he askedus was okay, say, I'm somebody
(26:50):
else and my father is amulti-billionaire and I can
raise this money in one day andI decide to copy and paste your
business model.
How do you survive that?
And I still remember we didn'thave an answer.
I was just like, oh.
So he said I need you.
It was really, he was verygracious.
Go think about that.
Go really think about what yourlines of death and equity will
be long term.
(27:11):
Um, and at the time I don'teven think we fully got it until
where we are now, as rivi whichwe'll talk about question was
around how do you build asustainable business where
you're not relying on constantequity radius and you're able to
become profitable?
I think that was his underlyingquestion.
And so by the next time weapplied, we were in a better
(27:32):
position.
We understood the market a bitmore.
What I would say in terms ofadvising, I don't think any door
is permanently locked.
Right, it might be closed, butit doesn't mean it's locked.
So you go back again and you'relocked.
And it's also learning for youas a founder.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Thank you for sharing that.
So in 2022, you guys are likeon a roll You've built this
business or you're building thisbusiness.
You raise money, but then yougo through some shocks in Q4, I
think, in 2022.
Can you talk to us just a bitabout what happened and how you
(28:05):
navigated that challenge?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
That was one of the hardest things of my life.
I had gone off to have my babyand so many things had changed
in the business.
I think, just from anoperations perspective again, we
were probably our vision.
We were starting to lose track,or lose sight of our vision,
rather, and so a lot of mistakeswere happening.
In that season, unfortunatelyfor us, we were hit by a fraud
(28:30):
ring and prior to this, a lot ofour investors had wondered so
you're operating in a financialsector anywhere in the world.
This is one of the things thatcould potentially happen to you.
We thought we were ready, likeevery small business, right, we
had limited resources, we didn'tget time, and so we were hit by
fraud ring.
We lost a substantial amount ofmoney and after that experience
(28:55):
, the business, because of howmuch it was hit, basically went
into a time of survival.
So some of the things that wehad to do.
We had to let go of employees,which, till this day, is just
the worst feeling.
I think if you talk to anyentrepreneur, this is the
hardest part, like rebuildingyour business, pivoting, all of
(29:17):
that it's easier, but tellingpeople that, hey, we're having
to downsize, we're having toshift focus, we can no longer do
XYZ, so we had to let go ofabout 60% of our workforce.
That was really really tough,you know, having people sort of
blame you or hold youresponsible or just cry in the
(29:39):
exit interviews.
It was really hard, and Iremember saying to someone prior
to this I was just a nice techfounder.
It was such a cool journey, andwhen I hit this roadblock, I
remember telling everyone nowI'm an entrepreneur, fully
certified, because now I havehit rock bottom and this is the
test.
I spoke to one of my investorsand I said I don't think we can
(30:02):
do this anymore.
I'm going to leave.
And he said to me then you'renot an entrepreneur, so that
means you're only here for thejoyride.
This is your test.
This is the moment where weknow whether you really have it
in you to run a business comerain or sunshine.
And so while we were working onthat, about Q1 in 2023, my
co-founder, who we had initiallystarted the business with,
(30:24):
decided that he wanted to dosomething else and he was no
longer aligned with the vision.
So it was blow number two.
Any founder listening to this,or any business person with a
partner business partnerlistening to this, knows what
this means.
It's almost like a divorcelegally, emotionally and so
we're trying to clean up onemess and this is the second mess
(30:46):
, and so for me at that time, Iwas afraid, I was nervous.
What's going to happen?
How do investors look at us?
One of the things we werealways told was investors invest
in people.
They don't necessarily investin the idea, and so for me, I
just thought are they going tofeel that we failed them?
We weren't responsible founders, and so there was just that
(31:09):
heavy weight of responsibilityat the time, and while I was
still dealing with that, mysecond co-founder then decided
to leave as well.
Oh, dear god.
He decided to leave in thatmoment, and I do understand in
hindsight.
The sinking ship to some peopleis jump on, get on a lifeboat
(31:29):
and save yourself, or also justlet it sink and do something
else.
It's going to fail anyway.
But I had a different mindsetat the time and I thought we
hadn't tried enough before wedid that white flag and I said
to my co-founders we needed totry and fight for this and then,
if it sinks, we know we triedversus just seeing a sign that
(31:51):
oh, maybe the ship's fallingapart a little bit, let's just
let it die.
And so I made a promise tomyself to stay on a flight and I
didn't do this alone.
Thankfully, I had a fantastic wehad a fantastic CFO at the time
and I call him our crisis CFOBecause from day one when he
started was when the fraudhappened and all these other
(32:14):
things that kept happening.
And I would look at him andjust say I'm sure you regret
taking our job off Now.
You've just come into anightmare.
But he was a more seasonedfinancial expert and I don't
think he was afraid by what hewas seeing, just based on his
experience.
And so, before my co-foundersleft, we all agreed.
(32:35):
I mean, we agreed on this onething to make him work in CFO2,
to become the CEO.
I had just had a baby.
I didn't have the capacity, Ijust knew that I needed someone
with a fresh mind to take theseat, and then I stayed on to
manage the team, managinginvestors, stakeholders.
(32:56):
They needed a familiar face,right Um, and just steady the
ship from from beneath while he,kind of, you know, sits on the
top and and runs the day-to-daystrategic vision for the company
wow, that's a lot.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Trauma.
That is a lot.
So why did you decide to stayon?
Because one of your co-foundersis the one who initially said
let's do this.
Why did you decide to stay on?
Speaker 2 (33:22):
I genuinely love Africa, I genuinely love Nigeria
, and for me, building thisbusiness wasn't a show.
It was, again, a solution to aproblem that I felt like I
hadn't fully finished building,and I think, just looking back
on all my years childhood,teenage years I think I built a
level of resilience and gritthat I didn't realize I I had
(33:42):
because I never needed to callon it till this moment.
Um.
I also thought aroundstakeholder management.
Um, I had investors, I had theecosystem in Lagos.
I'm a Nigerian.
This is my home, this is mybase walking away.
There's nowhere else to walk to.
Where do I walk to?
This was it for me, and again Ineeded the story to go full
(34:04):
circle, so I wanted to finishwhat I'd started.
So, even if it died, at least Ihad seen it through till the
end.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
I love that.
And what was your supportsystem like, because those must
have been some very trying times.
What was your support systemlike?
Speaker 2 (34:20):
My poor husband, my mother, my siblings and, I'd say
, my son at the time definitelygot the hit because every day, I
think I was crying every dayfor a while.
Just, I was exhausted, I wasburnt out.
I had read about burnout but Ididn't realize what it was.
And just having the guysliterally listen to me.
(34:42):
Red Tech found us, so theycould only provide so much
advice, but they gave me spaceto rant, to vent, to clear my
head and then to show up thenext day for my team, for my
investors, for everyone, and soI'm really thankful that I
definitely had them in my life.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
That's amazing.
And how did you manage yourinvestors?
Speaker 2 (35:05):
I was with Dami, my business partner now, and I got
thankful credit for it.
But that was tough that wastough.
We had investors who were veryupset with us for good reasons.
We had investors who didn't seethis coming.
So they were blindsided andcompletely, completely just
didn't see it coming, and sothey felt if you were in trouble
(35:26):
, why didn't you tell us on time?
They felt like you could havedone something on time.
I think for dami and I,transparency from the moment we
just knew what was happening, westarted to signal me um being
as transparent as we could.
Obviously, in hindsight, there'smore things you could have done
.
Maybe communicated better withour employees.
We tried, but there were sometimes where we were also
(35:48):
inserting.
So communicating when you'reinserting it's better not to
communicate because you don'tknow whether you're going left
or right.
But we tried our best tocommunicate with our
stakeholders and I remembersometimes I would say so we had
our private advisory uh, kind ofstakeholders, like one or two
of our investors, who were sortof I'd say our advisors and we'd
(36:10):
say guys, we only have onemonth runway, we don't have any
money company, we don't knowwhat's going to happen next
month.
We might have to shut down andthen sit with us as one through
numbers.
We had seasons of not payingourselves, like months of not
paying ourselves, just so thatthe team get paid and the
business, the light is on in thecompany and I think Dami and I
(36:31):
definitely co-managed,co-managed our stakeholders.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Yeah, thank you for staying the course.
It's incredible what youmanaged to ride, how you managed
to ride the storm, but yourecently made a bold pivot,
changing your entire businessmodel and announcing a new name.
So what's the current businessfocus and and what's the story
behind the name rivi?
Speaker 2 (36:56):
but currently we are still a financing company.
So that still correlates withour original identity, but right
now we're financing cleanenergy projects.
We say we're financing theclean energy transition across
Africa, we're financing thefuture of energy, and so we're
still providing financing tosmall businesses, to individuals
(37:19):
, to large corporations who arebuilding alternative means to
energy.
A couple of years ago we tookoff the subsidy in Nigeria.
Energy prices skyrocketed.
I think Nigeria has always beenon this cusp of clean energy
transition but never reallytaken the leap because we always
(37:39):
had oil to go back on.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
And I think that single-hand move.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
As horrible as it was at the time, it definitely
forced us to think outside thebox.
So hospitals, health careproviders, core social
infrastructure, could no longerrely on generator Diesel costs
fuel costs had skyrocketed torun these businesses or these
places of social net, socialsafety nets for their
(38:05):
communities.
And so we started looking atsolar, wind, different types of
batteries, just to close thatgap.
And so, again, we were anexperience.
We understand the small andmedium-sized business space.
We know how to clearly definecredit worthy businesses.
Why don't we just see this asan opportunity?
And so we started off as a newproduct.
(38:28):
So we created a solar financingproduct alongside our original
product, then just became thecall.
We started to see the growth,we saw the opportunity and again
, we always wanted to build abusiness that was impact focused
.
So with this you can actuallytangibly not that our previous
business wasn't impact focused,but this is more tangible
(38:49):
because you can see that directimpact on a day-to-day and so we
did the pivot and Dami and Iknew that we also needed to
rebrand.
Just coming out of hell, comingout of the co-founder's speech,
change of strategic, change ofthe company, our vision.
We felt that the name Payhipowas very much connected to
(39:11):
payment banking.
We were trying to be a businessbank for Africa.
We had even bought a bank andso we needed to rebrand and let
people know that this is our newfocus and our direction.
The name Reevee, as you askedasked, is a Hindu word that's
associated with brilliance andlight and sunlight and
(39:32):
personally I felt like I'd beengiven a second chance to shine
and so, yeah, we're very excitedabout the name change, our team
.
We revealed the name to ourteam before we did the general
public and I think everyone wasjust excited about the potential
and the possibility.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Congratulations on that.
And how have you handled thetransition from PayHippo to Rivi
in terms of branding andpositioning and getting the name
out there?
Speaker 2 (40:00):
We worked with a fantastic PR company, PR
communication company.
I definitely had Dami and Iinitially thought we could do
this ourselves and I just said,no, we're going to mess it up
and I'm just coming fromclearing up a mess.
I felt that we needed an expertwho understood how to
communicate this acrossdifferent stakeholders.
One, we're communicating to theteam, then we're communicating
(40:21):
to investors, then we'recommunicating to the ecosystem
of technology, then we're alsosignaling to the energy
ecosystem that, hey, there's anew player here.
Then the biggest pie was ourcustomer.
I love Nigerians, I love myhome, but I could easily see
them going.
Rivi, I don't know Rivi, I knowPei Heko.
(40:45):
And so I remember working with aPR company and I said my
customers are the most importantgroup here, because they need
to understand what we're nowproviding and the usefulness of
it to them.
Let them know that it's thesame team, the same group, it's
not a fraudulent company who'scoming over to confuse you.
And so we did really well inlaunching that.
(41:08):
We had multiple steps, from thecolor, the identity, defining
our tagline and then, obviously,the community outreach.
I have a great team that I workwith, so my marketing team, my
sales team it was all hands ondeck.
It was like a startup 2.0.
So, again, everybody wasvaluable in this process.
(41:29):
We needed everyone's inputcustomer success team, my tech
team, just everyone all hands ondeck.
And and I would say it was asuccess it has been so smooth
and easy.
It's almost like sometimes Iforget that it's happened
because people have just goneinto.
Hey, I read about what you guysare now doing, tell me about
(41:50):
the shift, tell me about thechange, like, okay, this went
out smooth.
But once in a while Dami and Iin meetings would say, hey, you
poets doing this and we'd haveto correct ourselves.
So we're still actually stayingterminally in-house.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
The point on using a PR company so well taken.
I think that it can take a lotof stress out of the process of
repositioning and you mentionedthat this was like startup 2.0.
Are there lessons from thefirst time round that you took
into this and implemented as youwere rolling out this rebrand,
the?
Speaker 2 (42:26):
first one, I'd say, was really understanding our
ecosystem.
I think we were playing in afinancial space and we
downplayed the potential forfraud rings or just fraud
attempts on our system, and sowe successfully upgraded our
tech.
We built our tech completelyin-house.
Nigerian tech gurus that I'm soproud of Kudos to them, kudos,
(42:50):
kudos.
Every day.
I see them.
I'm incredibly impressed.
And so we upped our security.
We increased the way that weverify, we underwrite, we
partnered with other innovatorsin the ecosystem and layering
their own innovation indifferent ways on top of ours,
(43:10):
whether that's geolocation orpulling into various databases
across the country to ensurethat you're properly defining,
then also using AI.
With our credit underwriting,we have five years of data of
seeing different types ofbusinesses across different
(43:31):
sectors, different performancedata.
We have key indicators nowwhere, almost from the jump, we
can say this is high risk orthis is the amount we should
give.
We can go past this.
This business is located inTremas village.
How safe is that?
What's the access?
So we're looking at differentthings beyond just the amount of
(43:55):
money that a company makes.
We're looking at environmentalfactors, we're looking at
accessibility, but that isn'tstopping us from pushing into
less accessible places, butwe're a bit more clear on what
our risk factors are.
We built in an engineering riskteam, yeah, and so, yeah, so
we've put in those measures forthat.
Another one I'll talk about isaround co-founder relationships.
(44:18):
I think it's just knowing thatif you've never had this, thank
your stars.
But I think this is somethingthat can happen to anyone and
it's very important how this issomething that can happen to
anyone and it's very importanthow this is managed and it could
come from different places.
It could just be misalignedvision.
It could also just be aco-founder who's burnt out or
exhausted and cannot carry onone of my.
When I look back now, I thinkone of the things that helped
(44:39):
was, at the beginning, justreally defining and that and I
mean that from a legalperspective right and really
understanding what each persondid and how that contributed to
the company growth, so that whenyou're having to unravel, it's
a lot easier because you alreadyhave things around.
Who owns the IP?
It's not owned by an individual, it's owned by this company.
(45:00):
What are our non-competeclauses Do we have?
Speaker 1 (45:03):
any.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
NDAs and just making sure that you have that from day
one so that if, along the road,you do face any bumps or
misunderstandings where you haveto split and go your separate
ways, it's a lot easier todetangle or untangle.
But there were two key things Ithink that we missed out on
(45:25):
doing, and that's reallydefining our decision-making
process.
So we were a co-founding teamof three and we had it written
somewhere in terms of two boardscan approve, but I still think
that we could have been a lotmore clearer on that
decision-making process becausethat led to us making mistakes
(45:45):
on other things.
And please, from day one, havea board.
Yes, business partners, businessoperators, founders needed a
board from day one.
We were advised that we didn'tneed one until Really yes, and I
don't know why that happened.
I still don't understand that,but a lot of tech founders or
(46:07):
tech companies at the time wouldtell you that you didn't need a
board until I think it wasseries A and it had something to
do with the equity and all ofthat stuff and the commitment
and the time plus.
Also, a board can reallyobstruct you from the type of
innovation that you want, and Ido get all of that for checks
and balances you need to afford,and so, in hindsight, we would
(46:31):
have set one up from the jump.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Thanks for sharing that.
Coming back to Rivi, I readthat you've already deployed,
dispersed, over $2 million inclean energy loans and I
wondered if you could share notto put you on the spot, maybe
one example of a success storyof one of your companies just
(46:53):
showing some real world impactfor Rivi.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
Oh, I have tons, but I'll speak on two One short one
and one long one.
One is a healthcare operator,like a pharmacist that stores
medication and injections and Idon't want to say pharmacist,
but more a middleman in thehealthcare sector, and so power
supply for them isnon-negotiable.
You can't even imagine a momentwhere they're disconnected from
(47:19):
the grid or people who are?
listening that are not familiar.
Nigeria gets power from thegreen maybe three hours a day,
if at all, on average, and sothese operators need an
alternative source of source ofenergy, and so working with us
one the financing option allowsthem to not completely pour out
(47:39):
all their funds into the highcapital cost it takes to acquire
solar or whatever alternativethey choose to go with.
So with us we could spreadthose payments.
It's not heavy on the business,and then they're also able to
provide their own services totheir customers.
Healthcare is life-saving.
We would not know the amount oflives that could be impacted or
(48:03):
be lost if they don't haveaccess to medicine on time or
properly stored medication.
So for us, that's one of thehuge ways that we're seeing
impact in Nigeria.
Another one example is we'reworking with microgrid
installers who are installinglarger energy provision for, say
(48:25):
, universities or largebusinesses, and with that group
we're just thinking beyond yourtraditional finance.
We're thinking how can we beinnovative with the finance that
they can access to really scalewhat they're doing?
And so we're looking atsomething called carbon
financing, which is anothertechnicality for another option
(48:47):
for innovative finance forlarger energy providers who are
in the clean energy space.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
So coming back to funding, you've raised over what
?
$15 million in a mix of equityand debt.
I was reading and I wonder whatadvice you would give to
founders, especially women, whoare navigating the question of
whether to raise debt or equity.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Wow.
Yes, every time I hear thatfigure, even I sometimes I'm
shocked because it was learningfor me.
I'd never raised money before.
So everything that I've done onthat front I've had to learn
the goal front.
I've had to learn the goal.
So I'd say one of the biggestthing I can say to anyone is
(49:32):
focus on your profit margin,really understand your
projections.
So where are you as a companynow?
Are you profitable?
If you're not, how long does ittake you to get to
profitability?
That's step one, so you reallyunderstand the health of your
finances within this businessthat you're building.
Some businesses in some sectorsdo not give away any equity at
(49:53):
all.
So, for instance, if from dayone, you're making a million
dollars a month, you might notneed the type of equity that,
say, a company like mine neededfrom being one.
I sat in a room with a techfounder who described to us that
his first raise was $350,000,and his second raise was $350
(50:14):
million.
He didn't do any raise inbetween.
So his company got toprofitability really quickly.
He was able to sustain and growthe business.
So he wanted to hold as muchequity because for every raise
that you do get diluted becauseyou're giving away more of your
company, and so I would say fora founder or entrepreneur,
really understand that equitybalance.
(50:37):
see where your business is at ifyou really do need it for debt.
For a company like us who lends, debt is our milking cow.
Basically, we do need to raisedebt to lend to our customers,
and so for us, that is ano-brainer.
But again, one of the things Ilove about debt is it makes you
a bit more conscious, probablymore than equity, because you do
(51:00):
have to repay your debt.
And when we're raising debt fromsayfis or other financial
institutions, there's a lot ofscrutiny on us.
So you can't just walk into anyplace and say, hey, I need 100
million dollars debt.
They're going to look throughyour books, they're going to
look through your performance,they're going to qualify you as
high risk or low risk, and so ifyour business isn't at the
(51:21):
point where you would pass, say,a due diligence for a debt,
raise, give yourself time,understand your core and if,
honestly, you can really runyour business profitable from an
early stage, keep it at thatuntil maybe you want to do
something huge.
Say you want to expand to adifferent geographic location.
So say you're working out ofAfrica and suddenly you want to
(51:44):
build, expand your business intoEurope or the?
U, you do need that injection ofcapital then you have a need
for it don't give away too muchequity and please have a board.
So it could be an advisoryboard initially, but just have
that for your checks andbalances duly noted.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
So I'm going to ask you to put on your policy hat
for a little bit.
You're building into highlyregulated industries finance and
energy.
How is Rivi adapting to theregulatory landscape in Nigeria
and what's it been like for youso starting?
Speaker 2 (52:19):
from the fintech space.
It was confusing in thebeginning.
In 2019, the ecosystem wasliterally just booming,
especially the fintech space,and even the regulators were
confused.
What's happening?
Who are you?
Why are you doing this?
You don't have the rightlicense, we're stopping your
business.
And a lot of tech founders tookthat in a very negative way,
(52:42):
almost defining that thegovernment didn't like us or
what we were doing.
But because I had a policybackground, I completely
understood where they werecoming from, like, we need
regulation, we need tounderstand what they're doing.
But at the time, we weren'tspeaking to each other, but the
tech companies were speaking toeach other and there was just a
disconnect, I would say, overtime.
So from about 2020 till now,there's been a lot of the
(53:05):
government coming to techfounders or the ecosystem and
saying, hey, we're seeinginsurance tech.
Can we have a conversationaround?
What does this mean?
What are your licenses?
Okay, the license we have, doesit really fit a fintech or is
this more for a larger insurancecompany?
I'm just using that as anexample.
So we started talking more toeach other and you will notice
that the regulatory landscapehas changed over time.
(53:27):
So I'm a lender.
Who's my regulator?
Do I fall under the centralbank, do I fall under the
Securities Exchange Commissionor?
am I just under the stateregulator, and so there's a lot
more transparency with that.
The local legal companiesunderstand the landscape very
well, and so we rely heavily onthem.
So I have an incredible, uh bigroutine, and so every time we
(53:50):
want to make a move, hey, canyou check that?
What we're doing?
In the beginning tech companiesweren't checking.
We're just jumping, I'mstarting this company, I'm going
consequences later.
But I think now that for uswe've run a business for six
years, that would be quite.
It was wonderful.
So we're more on it withensuring that we're falling into
the proper regulations forfintech and now for the
(54:12):
cleantech space.
We're also going to be playingin the voluntary capital markets
.
Okay for nigeria, which isstill being designed at the
moment.
Again, we've come into a spacewhere there's almost no
regulation in that sense for thecarbon market, because it's
really new for the ecosystemhere, and so we're co-defining,
we're co-building, we'respeaking to the government,
(54:34):
they're speaking to us just toensure that nobody makes any
mistakes that are costly.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
Fantastic.
Shifting a little, you'vementioned in the past that
motherhood played a big role inyour journey as an entrepreneur
and I wonder if you can sharehow becoming a mom shaped, how
you lead, prioritize and evenshow up as a founder.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
Oh, being a mom just changed my whole life, and I
would say changed my life more,because I actually never wanted
to be a mom.
So it was one of those thingsthat um yes, but that's another
story for another podcast.
And so this came into my lifeand just completely, I'll say,
prior to my baby, I did notnecessarily have a work-life
(55:18):
balance.
I worked all the time having himhas taught me to slow down, not
to to stop, but to slow down toreflect on my achievements, to
take them in.
It helped me define myself inspaces.
So my son would walk up to mewhen he was about 18 months and
(55:39):
he'd say, and I thought tomyself oh my God, he sees me
working all the time.
He needs to see me in differentspaces where I'm having fun and
laughing and relaxed.
And so I'm more conscious ofthat and I'll just say he's made
me more a conscious human beingand just more gracious to
myself and appreciating all thework that I've done all these
(56:00):
years and my strengths and myweaknesses, and just almost
giving myself a pat on the backwhich I didn't know how to do
before.
Speaker 1 (56:08):
I like that.
I like that a lot.
So, just in wrapping up, Iwanted to find out what's next
for Rivi and are there anyexciting developments or markets
you're looking to expand to?
Or is this really just aNigeria play, nigeria?
Speaker 2 (56:25):
gets me so excited.
I can't even Nigeria play.
Nigeria gets me so excited Ican't even believe how much it
gets me this excited.
It shouldn't, because if you'reNigerian, all the parts of
living here that are reallystressful.
So for us right now, we've donethe rebrand.
We're taking over the space.
Nigeria is a huge market.
I don't think we're able tocover 5% of that yet.
(56:45):
Nigeria is a huge market.
I don't think we're able tocover 5% of that yet, and so we
really want to take our time andgo deep in this market.
We do have to bring Banshanagain into potentially West
Africa.
When we think about carbonfinance, that's the most
exciting part for me.
I haven't talked about it a loton this podcast because it's
still being fleshed out.
(57:05):
We've been building, we'restill working with our technical
partners, but on that plate itallows us to spread across
Africa and that gives us theconfidence to say, hey, we're
building financing for Africa,because with that plate we're
not bound by geography, and Ithink it just creates another
opportunity for the continent.
So many of the continents havebeen doing this for years and
(57:27):
we're only just coming into it.
I'm excited that we're a bitmore conscious and green.
Now knows.
Oh, we're going off the gridbecause we're switching to solar
.
It's like normal conversationin his vocabulary, rather than
saying we're switching to thegenerator money, and so that for
me, is also a sign that, justas we did with credit, teachings
(57:51):
the benefits of credit, I thinkwe're also doing that again in
the market, where we're pushingthis green transition that's
fantastic.
Speaker 1 (58:00):
you, earlier on, you spoke about how having your son
helped you stop and appreciatethe work that you're doing and
pat yourself on the back, so I'mgoing to give you a chance to
do that right now.
Looking back on your journey,what would you say is one or
maybe two of your proudestachievements so far?
Speaker 2 (58:21):
One or two of my proudest achievements.
I think building in Africa isone of my proudest achievements.
I think building in Africa isone of my proudest achievements.
I always just thought I wasgoing to be working in a company
and just be here, but I knewthat I wanted to really create
change, whatever that looks like, and I'm so thankful that I was
given the opportunity to dothis and that I grabbed that
(58:44):
opportunity and I built Peypawand from that journey I've now
built Reevee and continue tobuild.
I'm really proud of that andI'm also proud of being a mom
and and what that means for myfamily and for my son we can
tell.
Speaker 1 (59:00):
So in terms of advice , I always ask my guests to give
advice.
What advice would you give toother women who are building or
running businesses in Africa?
Speaker 2 (59:09):
building anything in Africa, doing anything in Africa
.
As a woman, it can be toughbecause we come from a
patriarchal culture and we knowwhat that means.
One of the things I always sayis I pick one or two women who I
had seen two incredible thingson the continent and realized
that they even came from a timebefore this time where there was
(59:32):
more resistance to theirsuccess and to their growth.
And what I learned from that,and I tell myself and I tell
other people, is stay the course, don't give up too soon, drill
deeper, because sometimes you'rein the same spot but you're
going deeper.
So externally it might looklike you're not going further,
(59:53):
but you're draining deeper.
Never be afraid when petrokeylooks at you in the face, just
look at it back and push on andjust stay the course, because
there's so much that comes fromjust refusing to give up so soon
as women in Africa who arebuilding the ripple effect is
incredible.
I cannot tell you the number ofyounger women or even my peers
(01:00:18):
who say I'm so inspired by this.
Oh my God, I can't believe youdid this.
I'm going to do this, I can'tbelieve you did this, I'm going
to do this, or inspire you moreto start that company to grow,
even within the nine to fivespace, and just push for
whatever's been determined asimpossible and just believing
that you can actually do it.
Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Fantastic, fantastic.
Thank you so much, emma.
And finally, how can ourlisteners learn more about Rivi
or get involved in supportingyour mission?
Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Thank you.
So for any updates on Rivi,we're online across all the
social media platforms at RiviHQ so you can follow our
progress and our journey.
If you're in Nigeria and you'rerunning a business, or you're
home and you're looking toswitch to solar, we are more
than excited to provide thefinancing required for that at
(01:01:12):
this initial stage, and once wehave new products, we will
definitely let the greaterpublic know about these.
Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
This has been an insightful conversation.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much, thank youfor having me.
Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
I've really enjoyed talking to you.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for having me.
I've really enjoyed talking toyou.
Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
Thank you so much for listening.
If you're not alreadysubscribed, please do so on
Apple, spotify or wherever youget your podcasts, and don't
forget to leave us a review sowe know how we're doing.
I'm Akego Okoye and you havebeen listening to African
Business Stories.
With more female entrepreneurs than any other
region in the world.
Women are at the heart ofAfrica's transformation.
Welcome to African BusinessStories, the show that amplifies
the voices of femaleentrepreneurs shaping Africa's
business landscape.
I'm your host, ekego Koye.
Here we explore bold ideas,strategies for scaling and the
(00:25):
realities of building businessesthat drive economic development
.
These stories will provideinsights into Africa's business
landscape, practical tools forgrowth and the inspiration to
navigate your ownentrepreneurial journey.
Be sure to subscribe, rate andshare.
Neural journey.
(00:52):
Be sure to subscribe, rate andshare On the show.
Today I chat with Chioma OkochaFaloyi, co-founder of Rivi,
formerly PayHippo, a Nigerianfintech company turned clean
energy finance innovator.
We talk about her childhood inPort Harcourt and her early
career journey.
Innovator.
We talk about her childhood inPort Harcourt and her early
career journey building astartup during uncertain times,
(01:12):
surviving co-founder breakups,raising over $15 million in
funding, and how her company isnow financing Africa's clean
energy transition.
It's a conversation about grit,reinvention and purpose-driven
leadership.
Let's get into it, hi, choma.
Welcome to African BusinessStories, hi.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Kato great to be here .
Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Thank you.
I remember that I met you likeso many years ago I think it was
like what, 2019 or something Ican't even remember now, 19 or
something I can't even remembernow and just randomly in Cairo,
and it's been just amazing tofollow your business growth and
your pivot, and I am superexcited to sit down with you
(01:54):
today and learn more about yourbusiness and how you've been
doing over the years.
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Thank you.
Thank you, I do remember Cairo.
I think it was after thepandemic or just before.
Oh was it.
Those years have merged intoeach other.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I know it feels like a long time.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I'm happy to be here and share the journey and what
we've been doing since ourcatch-up in Cairo.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
So I always start from the very beginning.
That's what I say.
One of my favorite all-timemovies is Sound of Music and I
love that line.
Let's start from the verybeginning.
So, just taking it back to yourchildhood, I know you grew up
in Potakot, which is in Nigeria,the oil capital of the country,
and I wonder what those yearswere like for you.
(02:40):
Were you a shell kid?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I was born in the mid-80s and my parents, our
family, was based out of Papakot.
My dad was in the oil and gasindustry.
My mom was a teacher.
She said she's a teacher forlife.
So I should say she is ateacher.
And so I grew up in quite asheltered small community of
(03:10):
trusted friends, family, strongfamily values.
And then I would say having amother as an educator was also
incredible in the sense of herbeing very specific on just
character, building, confidence,the small minute things as well
as the actual math and English.
So it was a great.
I look back with so muchfondness and a lot of
thankfulness to have grown upalmost in a sub-urban, like a
(03:32):
small urban community, and madeall my mistakes, learned a lot
of lessons, built myselfinternally before being thrown
out into the world.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Wow.
So what would you say if Iasked what was one of your
fondest childhood memories?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
what would you say that is there is so many, and I
think anyone listening today whohas grown up in PH would agree
we had a club where we would goswimming, riding bikes, tennis,
and it was great because youwould see your friends.
Our parents trusted the clubsto drop us there early in the
morning and maybe pick you upearly evening, and so you had
(04:11):
the whole day just being free.
There was a lot of green, lesspolluted and just running around
popcorn and suey and all thelife.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So what did you think you would be when you were
young, growing up around the oiland gas space?
Did you think that would formpart of your future at all?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Actually not In engineering.
My dad was certainly throwingthe engineering joke like oh,
you're so good at math, I thinkyou should be an engineer.
However, I really wanted to bea doctor.
I was obsessed.
And I had this very clear focusthat that was what I was going
to do from when I was like nineor ten, and medicine was it for
me.
I was on track, I just loved.
(04:53):
I'm not sure what about it, butmaybe again it was the 90s.
It was being a doctor the mostprestigious thing, I don't know.
But I was also pretty good withscience.
I liked, liked biology,chemistry.
I was a bit of a nerd, let'sjust say that now.
But then, unfortunately, my momhad an accident when I was about
13 or 14.
(05:13):
And I was around her quite alot and just helping her
navigate her healing journey,and it impacted me in a very
strange way.
I suddenly couldn't bear thethought of someone being in pain
, and every time she'd be inpain I would have the exact same
pain.
I'm not sure what it's called,but there's a name for it, and I
think it was just a lot ofempathy in the moment.
(05:34):
And I remember mom just sayingto me I don't think this
medicine is going to quite workout well for you.
Maybe you should look at otheroptions.
And so I sat with my dad and Iwas like, okay, now the
engineering thing sounds likethe next best option.
And so engineering came up,computer science came up, and
that's how I got out of medicineunfortunately.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
So you then went on to study computer science.
Okay, and what was that likefor you?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
It was strange in a little way because this was 2000
and I graduated 2001.
By 2002, I was in a Nigerianuniversity called Babcock
University and I was doing apre-degree program to study
computer science in my focus,from biology and just from
(06:24):
biology, right the human body,learning around that to being a
lot more focused with my mathand further math and all the
numbers and binary.
But I do remember that it wasthe coding.
Languages were very differentthen.
I forget.
I think it was basic, I thinkit was C sharp I think, at that
time, but it was very differentfrom what we're doing now with
(06:46):
Python and all the AI stuff.
But I liked it as well.
I think I'd say I was doingpretty well at school.
I had mixed my programs so thatI could graduate not just
knowing about computer sciencebut I was also going to go into
taking ACCA, which is like theaccounting certification, just
so that I also had a financeexposure at the time.
(07:07):
This wasn't a solo thought, itwas more.
Babcock was very good at makingsure you balance.
I think they built theuniversity system in a very
American way where you wouldhave your major and your minor,
and so I was there for about twoand a half years.
I was going into my third yearand I suddenly had this aha
moment that I wanted to leaveBabcock.
(07:30):
I just didn't think that I wasreally thriving there as a
person.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
My sister- was there and she was thriving.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
I didn't think I was, and so I decided I was going to
go to England, didn't have aconversation with my parents and
make this decision.
I was doing all my applicationsonline with my pocket money.
I did everything and then I gotmy admission letter and I
remember I went home thatChristmas and I said I'm not
going back to Babcock, I'm goingto start school in England in
(07:53):
September.
Mind you, I was on ascholarship in Babcock and to
this day I can't really see howmy parents transitioned from.
That is a crazy thought to okay, let's go.
All I do know is in September Iwas in England.
Um, and I have interviewed themcountless times like how did you
(08:14):
take your 16 year old thatseriously to make that sort of
decision on her own, and how didyou?
Speaker 1 (08:19):
trust it.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
They haven't really been very clear with the answers
.
That's how I found myself inEngland and I started my degree
all over again, so I went fromgoing to my third year to like
going to my first year ofuniversity.
But because I'd had auniversity experience locally, I
was mature.
I was really focused on what Iwanted to do and what outcomes.
I wanted to just experienceeverything about this new
(08:41):
environment and that's how Iwent to England for my degree
completion.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
So what did your career then look like?
Because I see that you've doneso many different things and I
just wonder what your initialcareer was when you completed
your degree.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yes, I have to give a bit of credit to the careers
lady at my uni.
When I arrived I said to her oh, I want to do the major minor.
Can I do accounting?
Because I was interested in alittle bit of finance and I
thought it was math, I likenumbers.
And I remember her saying ifyou have to do that, you might
have to completely change yourmajor.
And I was willing to.
(09:19):
I was like, OK, what does thattake?
And I remember she just lookedat me.
She said please do not do that.
Um, this is your undergrad.
Take this as your springboard.
Right, you'll come out here.
You've learned all thistechnical knowledge around
things.
You've got all this experience.
This is your springboard.
When you're done here, you canliterally fly and do anything
that you wanted to do.
And I kept that in the back ofmy mind.
(09:42):
So, so when I finished uni, Ireally wanted to work in the
investment banks.
I was applying to LehmanBrothers and I had interviews
and I still remember after myinterview was when Lehman
Brothers shot down.
I thought, oh, maybe this isthe time.
And unfortunately I did thatand I got into finance.
I would say finance more froman advisory perspective.
(10:05):
So I wasn't doing coreaccounting but more around
advisory working with.
I remember I did.
I worked with SMEs when I wasat the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
I did some revenue analysis witha company in the UK before I
moved back to Nigeria and thoseexperiences for me were very
fundamental One, just learninghow to work, which is obvious,
(10:28):
but two I think that's where Istarted to understand the
different landscapes, sounderstanding what the UK, what
culture was like, what the needswere.
And then coming to Nigeria forNYSE working and then seeing
where the problems were,opportunities were, challenges
were, and in that moment Istarted doing a lot of
volunteering and working withnon-profits locally on the
(10:49):
weekend and I had an aha momentwhere I said, okay, if I was
going to make change in Nigeriabecause we're always having that
conversation as Nigerians oneof the most effective ways would
be around policy.
I need to get into politics, Ican quickly change things faster
.
And so I went to grad schooland studied public policy.
Yeah, that's it aroundeducation.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Wow, so was that before or after your stint with
the Tony Blair Institute?
Oh, this was before.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
So I had the experience working in the stock
exchange and, oh God, I forgetthe other states that I worked
while I was in Nigeria.
And then I had this aha momentwhen I was in France.
I was exposed to capstoneconsulting.
So where you're working on realproduct and projects while
you're at school.
And I worked with the Frenchdevelopment agency.
(11:38):
I worked with the OECD postgrad school and, funny enough,
both projects were sort oflooking at Africa.
So with the AFD I was workingon, like a credit project,
public and private partnershipsin the southwest of Nigeria, and
with the OECD I was looking atWest African states, sahel and
(12:00):
West African states.
And so again I felt, look, everytime I left Nigeria, every time
I did something globally, therewas always this pullback into
solving like a lot of thechallenges that existed here and
what can I do here?
So when I was in grad school Iinterned with Tony Elumelu.
Funny enough, I've worked withboth Tony Elumelu Foundation and
(12:22):
he was very much around the.
He was building a conceptaround what does capitalism look
like in Africa and how can wemake sure that we're conscious,
we're impactful and we're justnot building businesses for
profit.
I set that up with the team,built the tenets of what that
would look like, went back tograd school, then came back and
one of the best experiences Ihad was setting up the Teach for
(12:45):
All network in Nigeria.
Yeah, so I set up Teach forNigeria with the CEO and founder
at the time, and the wholeconcept was how can we get more
Nigerians who are, who havegreat degrees, finish top of
their class, how can we get themto give back to the education
sector before maybe going off tomany other things?
(13:06):
Because one of the issues wehad in Nigeria was just that
death of quality teachers,unfortunately and so I did that
for two and a half three yearsand it was a fantastic
experience.
I worked in the north and thesouth west of Nigeria.
Again, education was theproblem.
So one of the ways that I'vealways framed everything that
(13:26):
I've done is what is the problemand what is the solution?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I'm providing.
So there you are, straight outof uni working in finance,
moving into policy, working inthe education space, and then,
at what point do you then decidethat entrepreneurship is the
path to go?
Speaker 2 (13:47):
I would say entrepreneurship chose me again.
Like I said, for being a wantedto be a doctor.
Since then, learning aboutcomputer science and all these
things, I never actually thoughtI was a business person.
I tried running a fewbusinesses in uni very easy,
small mom and pop type of thingsbut I never really quite got it
(14:07):
.
So for Pei Hippo, I left Teachfor Nigeria at the time and I
was very much into playingsports just playing flag
football in Lagos in the newcommunity and I had met my
co-founder because we wereplaying on the same team and we
were just having a conversationaround.
He's American and a Nigerianand we're talking about the good
(14:30):
things about Nigeria and thethings that need help and the
challenges.
And I shared my experience withthe public-private partnership
I had worked on as a consultantwhere I was looking at the
credit system in Nigeria andspecifically on that project I
was looking at housing creditcredit for sorry credit for
buying homes and challenges thatthat project experienced, and
(14:52):
he, on the other hand, had beenworking with a lending company
locally and just randomly, hesaid hey, I think there's
something here.
You understand the problemreally well.
I understand what the solutioncould be.
Let's start a company.
This was June 2019.
And by July 2019, we hadliterally started a company.
Our best customer either inJuly or August.
(15:13):
Yeah, it was pretty much likegoal.
There was no moment to beafraid.
There was no moment to sayactually I think this is a crazy
idea.
I'm going to jump in.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
So were you doing this as a side hustle or did you
leave your job to startPayHippo?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
So I had left my job at the time, but I still had my
eyes on policy and so I wasstill applying for jobs with the
Tony Blair Institute and withother organizations when this
came up.
And so I think even when Istarted it, I don't think I
fully realized the scale of themagnitude.
I still saw it as, again,there's a problem in front of me
(15:49):
.
I've been called up to dream upa solution to implement it, and
so I took that approach, notnecessarily okay, I'm going to
start a company.
So the second it got reallyserious.
I said, okay, this is now mypolicy drive.
I'm still going to make impact.
I'm still going to build aresponsible, profitable business
(16:10):
.
Rather than doing it from theseat of government, I'm going to
be attacking this from theprivate sector.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
That's fantastic.
Do you still play flag football?
I?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
used to.
I played until I had my baby in2022.
And then I came back and mylegs aren't just moving as
quickly as they should, I know,and everyone on the team feels
like they're 18.
I was like, if I get injured,I'm going to pay the ultimate
price.
I do want to go back, but I'veshifted my game to tennis now,
so I play tennis once a week,sometimes twice a week.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
So tell us a bit about PayHippo.
We're coming to what thecompany is today, but tell us a
bit about PayHippo.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
So PayHippo started with the big problem in front of
it, which was how do we ensurethat small businesses in Nigeria
can access credit?
It seems like a very easyproblem, but it's a huge one.
At the time, a lot of SMEsweren't successfully accessing
credit from your traditionalfinancial institutions and it
(17:10):
wasn't a deliberate move.
It was really from a space ofwe don't know how to underwrite
small businesses, we don't knowhow to verify who they are, we
don't know how to really keeptrack of their revenue, their
inflows and their outflows.
Some of these businesses aremoving a lot of money, have a
lot of customers, but they stillrun their accounting and
(17:31):
inventory system in a veryinformal way, and so the
traditional financialinstitutions were just like the
risk is too much.
Fortunately for us, I think wecame into the market where there
were other startups and otherinnovators who were tackling
different problems.
So you had startups who werelooking at an identity issue how
can we ensure that identitystreamlined across Nigeria?
(17:52):
People like UBC they are.
You also had people who werebuilding software for small
businesses to help them organizetheir transactions, organize
their accounting, in such a waythat now they have all the
documents and information thatthey need to access the
so-called credit.
So by the time we came into themarket and we said we're going
(18:13):
to build an automated under thatwould define a business owner.
Are you who you say you are?
They would also look at theirnumbers and say, based on what
you do as a business owner, areyou who you say you are?
They would also look at theirnumbers and say, based on what
you do as a business over thepast six months, 12 months, 24
months, this is how much moneyyou need.
This is how much money you canaccess on a financial platform,
(18:35):
and this is just to make surethat, as we're giving credit,
you also have the ability torepay what we didn't want to do
into the market was just throwmoney at business owners to
repay.
what we didn't want to do intothe market was just throw money
at business owners because, aswell, you don't want to increase
defaults where businesses don'tunderstand how credit works and
then they don't run intoproblems.
Right, remember, this is a newcredit environment, nigeria.
(18:56):
Nigeria is more like a heavypay up front type of was, more
like that you want to buy a car,you buy it upfront.
You're paying your rent, youpay upfront for a year.
We had never really built thiscredit system that I believe
small businesses needed toexpand to scale, especially if
you were a distributor or animporter where you're buying
(19:18):
things large scale, not havingaccess to funds could greatly
slow down or even extinguishyour business.
And so we came in and we builtthat system out and made it
automated.
But we were also able to feedother companies from what we
were learning, and one of themwas at the credit bureau that
now exists in Nigeria, justlearning from companies like us.
(19:40):
So you have a great customerwho's steady with their
repayments, they go on thisbureau as great with credit.
So you have a customer who'sdefaulting, they go on that
bureau as poor credit, so otherorganizations whether that's car
, fintech or housing creditsystems could also feed from the
bureau and say, hey, is thiscustomer credit worthy?
(20:03):
And so I think doing that from2019 to about 2022.
Just building up that systemwas incredible.
We supported over 35 000businesses, which is worth at
least um 17 million dollars theperiod, and I was just proud of
the fact that SMEs were finallygetting that recognition that
(20:24):
they're actually viablebusinesses that make up quite a
lot of the economy in Nigeria,quite a lot of the GDP, employ a
large percentage of the workingforce.
Not everybody works with thebanks or the oil and gas
industry, right, so it was goodto see that diversity happening.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
But you spoke about going from idea to
implementation in one month andnot having any time to be afraid
, which I think is very powerful.
Were there any things that youdid as a first-time founder to
shore up your own personalconfidence in starting this
business?
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I think to give myself a bit of credit.
I think I love challenges,right.
Show up your own personalconfidence in starting this
business, I think, to givemyself a bit of credit.
I think I love challenges,right.
So I think when someone orsomething is a no, I'm like, oh,
I want to figure this out.
But I think, in more real terms,having a co-founder at the time
was extremely valuable, becausenow it's almost like having a
free accountability coach, right?
(21:21):
Okay, so you're doing marketing, I'm doing finance, you're
doing PR, I'm doing tech.
You're able to complement eachother.
And also when one person mightbe feeling nervous, the other
person is like we've got this,let's go.
So I think in those initialdays I always say having a
business partner was definitelyone of the reasons why we were
(21:43):
able to move as quickly as wedid.
I don't know, maybe if I wasalone I might have said, oh, I
need to draw up a business plan.
Or now I need to email 10 of myadvisors to see if they think
it's valuable.
And time is going and yourconfidence is dying off and by
the time you're ready to start,you're so exhausted.
It's like I'm not doing thisanymore.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
So that definitely helped and I know that you guys
did the Y Combinator twice.
I read we applied twice.
What was the thinking behinddoing that and what were your
takeaways from that experience?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
wow.
It was a great experiencebecause when we started, none of
us my co-founder had built abusiness before, but we realized
that what we were doing waslarge scale One.
We were going to be playing inthe financial ecosystem without
as a new player, more so as astartup player, so not a new
player that's coming in with acommercial license to get a bank
(22:35):
right.
You're coming in and you'retrying to create a solution, but
you're going to be working inthis very heavily regulated
sector.
Also, we also knew that weneeded validation around our
idea, and by that I mean one ofthe things accelerator programs
or introducer programs providefor you.
They give you the space to test, to really think about your
(22:56):
business, to have otherentrepreneurs look at your
business and go maybe, oh, howabout this?
Have you thought about that?
Nobody ever tells you that's abad idea, but they're able to
scrutinize it in a way that getsyou thinking.
And I always say that one of thegreat things I had at Y
Combinator was I remember therewas a point where one of our
(23:17):
advisors said to us yourbusiness is dead.
What killed it?
And he wanted us to think aboutthat.
And honestly, I couldn't thinkabout that I was like what's my
business going to die and I'mgoing to put in everything.
What do you mean?
It's going to die, but it washelpful.
So we thought about everythingfrom co-founder split to running
out of cash to just simplyhaving a bad idea, and it helped
(23:40):
, helped us tackle.
If you get to that point, areyou also going to be bold enough
and brave enough to either shutit down or to pivot, or to do
it in a confident way?
So that was one of the things Ilearned from there, but another
plus was also just the exposure, I think.
As an African fintech at thetime, we were then exposed to
(24:02):
lots of investors in the US andacross the world who were
interested in what we were doingand who were very excited about
the African market.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
You then went on a year later to raise.
I think you raised a millionpre-seed and three million in
your seed round.
Am I correct with those numbers?
Speaker 2 (24:21):
That's correct.
Yes, that's correct.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Do you think that going through the accelerator
program was part of your successat raising so early?
Speaker 2 (24:29):
I would speak about this, but I will also give a bit
of a disclaimer, in the sensethat the ecosystem has matured
so much from 2020 or 2019.
There's so much that we'rethinking about now than what
we're thinking about then.
So, for instance, in 2020, 2021, there was a lot of heavy
conversation around revenue andaround your valuation as a
(24:51):
company, so everyone and theirmother was obsessed with these
metrics, whereas if you speak toreal established entrepreneurs,
your focus is really aroundprofitability and sustainability
.
Is your business making moneyto get the revenue?
So you make all this revenue,but when you take that all your
costs are you a profitablecompany?
(25:13):
Are you making losses?
So I think at that time, wewere super focused on the
revenue and we're doingincredible revenue, and I think
that also just comes from theNigerian market.
We have the market size.
Nigerians are entrepreneurs byheart, and so, if you're talking
about SMEs that are viable, wehad the customer base.
(25:35):
And so our numbers were greatand then obviously that was in a
way that got people excited.
So I do think doing the YCombinator program at that time
was definitely a springboard forus locally and also
internationally as well, and Iwould say it definitely
contributed to investors lookingat us.
So when you're at the YCombinator, you actually have a
pitch day and on that day it'sopen to investors to come in and
(25:59):
listen to your pitch, and sothose are people that I was in a
room with that maybe ordinarilyI may not have been able to get
to them so quickly, so I'd sayit helped.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Still on the Y Combinator.
Just a last question.
So what made the differencebetween I think you applied in
2020 and didn't get in, but thenyou got in 2021.
So for founders, femalefounders, who are listening to
this and contemplating thisaccelerator or any other
accelerator program, what madethe difference in those two
years for you?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I think the first time we applied, maybe we
weren't as ready and, by that,really understanding what our
business model was and reallyunderstanding how we're going to
make money.
And I still remember ourinterviewed with Michael Siebel
and he asked us in terms ofraising money for lending
business.
One of the questions he askedus was okay, say, I'm somebody
(26:50):
else and my father is amulti-billionaire and I can
raise this money in one day andI decide to copy and paste your
business model.
How do you survive that?
And I still remember we didn'thave an answer.
I was just like, oh.
So he said I need you.
It was really, he was verygracious.
Go think about that.
Go really think about what yourlines of death and equity will
be long term.
(27:11):
Um, and at the time I don'teven think we fully got it until
where we are now, as rivi whichwe'll talk about question was
around how do you build asustainable business where
you're not relying on constantequity radius and you're able to
become profitable?
I think that was his underlyingquestion.
And so by the next time weapplied, we were in a better
(27:32):
position.
We understood the market a bitmore.
What I would say in terms ofadvising, I don't think any door
is permanently locked.
Right, it might be closed, butit doesn't mean it's locked.
So you go back again and you'relocked.
And it's also learning for youas a founder.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Thank you for sharing that.
So in 2022, you guys are likeon a roll You've built this
business or you're building thisbusiness.
You raise money, but then yougo through some shocks in Q4, I
think, in 2022.
Can you talk to us just a bitabout what happened and how you
(28:05):
navigated that challenge?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
That was one of the hardest things of my life.
I had gone off to have my babyand so many things had changed
in the business.
I think, just from anoperations perspective again, we
were probably our vision.
We were starting to lose track,or lose sight of our vision,
rather, and so a lot of mistakeswere happening.
In that season, unfortunatelyfor us, we were hit by a fraud
(28:30):
ring and prior to this, a lot ofour investors had wondered so
you're operating in a financialsector anywhere in the world.
This is one of the things thatcould potentially happen to you.
We thought we were ready, likeevery small business, right, we
had limited resources, we didn'tget time, and so we were hit by
fraud ring.
We lost a substantial amount ofmoney and after that experience
(28:55):
, the business, because of howmuch it was hit, basically went
into a time of survival.
So some of the things that wehad to do.
We had to let go of employees,which, till this day, is just
the worst feeling.
I think if you talk to anyentrepreneur, this is the
hardest part, like rebuildingyour business, pivoting, all of
(29:17):
that it's easier, but tellingpeople that, hey, we're having
to downsize, we're having toshift focus, we can no longer do
XYZ, so we had to let go ofabout 60% of our workforce.
That was really really tough,you know, having people sort of
blame you or hold youresponsible or just cry in the
(29:39):
exit interviews.
It was really hard, and Iremember saying to someone prior
to this I was just a nice techfounder.
It was such a cool journey, andwhen I hit this roadblock, I
remember telling everyone nowI'm an entrepreneur, fully
certified, because now I havehit rock bottom and this is the
test.
I spoke to one of my investorsand I said I don't think we can
(30:02):
do this anymore.
I'm going to leave.
And he said to me then you'renot an entrepreneur, so that
means you're only here for thejoyride.
This is your test.
This is the moment where weknow whether you really have it
in you to run a business comerain or sunshine.
And so while we were working onthat, about Q1 in 2023, my
co-founder, who we had initiallystarted the business with,
(30:24):
decided that he wanted to dosomething else and he was no
longer aligned with the vision.
So it was blow number two.
Any founder listening to this,or any business person with a
partner business partnerlistening to this, knows what
this means.
It's almost like a divorcelegally, emotionally and so
we're trying to clean up onemess and this is the second mess
(30:46):
, and so for me at that time, Iwas afraid, I was nervous.
What's going to happen?
How do investors look at us?
One of the things we werealways told was investors invest
in people.
They don't necessarily investin the idea, and so for me, I
just thought are they going tofeel that we failed them?
We weren't responsible founders, and so there was just that
(31:09):
heavy weight of responsibilityat the time, and while I was
still dealing with that, mysecond co-founder then decided
to leave as well.
Oh, dear god.
He decided to leave in thatmoment, and I do understand in
hindsight.
The sinking ship to some peopleis jump on, get on a lifeboat
(31:29):
and save yourself, or also justlet it sink and do something
else.
It's going to fail anyway.
But I had a different mindsetat the time and I thought we
hadn't tried enough before wedid that white flag and I said
to my co-founders we needed totry and fight for this and then,
if it sinks, we know we triedversus just seeing a sign that
(31:51):
oh, maybe the ship's fallingapart a little bit, let's just
let it die.
And so I made a promise tomyself to stay on a flight and I
didn't do this alone.
Thankfully, I had a fantastic wehad a fantastic CFO at the time
and I call him our crisis CFOBecause from day one when he
started was when the fraudhappened and all these other
(32:14):
things that kept happening.
And I would look at him andjust say I'm sure you regret
taking our job off Now.
You've just come into anightmare.
But he was a more seasonedfinancial expert and I don't
think he was afraid by what hewas seeing, just based on his
experience.
And so, before my co-foundersleft, we all agreed.
(32:35):
I mean, we agreed on this onething to make him work in CFO2,
to become the CEO.
I had just had a baby.
I didn't have the capacity, Ijust knew that I needed someone
with a fresh mind to take theseat, and then I stayed on to
manage the team, managinginvestors, stakeholders.
(32:56):
They needed a familiar face,right Um, and just steady the
ship from from beneath while he,kind of, you know, sits on the
top and and runs the day-to-daystrategic vision for the company
wow, that's a lot.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Trauma.
That is a lot.
So why did you decide to stayon?
Because one of your co-foundersis the one who initially said
let's do this.
Why did you decide to stay on?
Speaker 2 (33:22):
I genuinely love Africa, I genuinely love Nigeria
, and for me, building thisbusiness wasn't a show.
It was, again, a solution to aproblem that I felt like I
hadn't fully finished building,and I think, just looking back
on all my years childhood,teenage years I think I built a
level of resilience and gritthat I didn't realize I I had
(33:42):
because I never needed to callon it till this moment.
Um.
I also thought aroundstakeholder management.
Um, I had investors, I had theecosystem in Lagos.
I'm a Nigerian.
This is my home, this is mybase walking away.
There's nowhere else to walk to.
Where do I walk to?
This was it for me, and again Ineeded the story to go full
(34:04):
circle, so I wanted to finishwhat I'd started.
So, even if it died, at least Ihad seen it through till the
end.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
I love that.
And what was your supportsystem like, because those must
have been some very trying times.
What was your support systemlike?
Speaker 2 (34:20):
My poor husband, my mother, my siblings and, I'd say
, my son at the time definitelygot the hit because every day, I
think I was crying every dayfor a while.
Just, I was exhausted, I wasburnt out.
I had read about burnout but Ididn't realize what it was.
And just having the guysliterally listen to me.
(34:42):
Red Tech found us, so theycould only provide so much
advice, but they gave me spaceto rant, to vent, to clear my
head and then to show up thenext day for my team, for my
investors, for everyone, and soI'm really thankful that I
definitely had them in my life.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
That's amazing.
And how did you manage yourinvestors?
Speaker 2 (35:05):
I was with Dami, my business partner now, and I got
thankful credit for it.
But that was tough that wastough.
We had investors who were veryupset with us for good reasons.
We had investors who didn't seethis coming.
So they were blindsided andcompletely, completely just
didn't see it coming, and sothey felt if you were in trouble
(35:26):
, why didn't you tell us on time?
They felt like you could havedone something on time.
I think for dami and I,transparency from the moment we
just knew what was happening, westarted to signal me um being
as transparent as we could.
Obviously, in hindsight, there'smore things you could have done
.
Maybe communicated better withour employees.
We tried, but there were sometimes where we were also
(35:48):
inserting.
So communicating when you'reinserting it's better not to
communicate because you don'tknow whether you're going left
or right.
But we tried our best tocommunicate with our
stakeholders and I remembersometimes I would say so we had
our private advisory uh, kind ofstakeholders, like one or two
of our investors, who were sortof I'd say our advisors and we'd
(36:10):
say guys, we only have onemonth runway, we don't have any
money company, we don't knowwhat's going to happen next
month.
We might have to shut down andthen sit with us as one through
numbers.
We had seasons of not payingourselves, like months of not
paying ourselves, just so thatthe team get paid and the
business, the light is on in thecompany and I think Dami and I
(36:31):
definitely co-managed,co-managed our stakeholders.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Yeah, thank you for staying the course.
It's incredible what youmanaged to ride, how you managed
to ride the storm, but yourecently made a bold pivot,
changing your entire businessmodel and announcing a new name.
So what's the current businessfocus and and what's the story
behind the name rivi?
Speaker 2 (36:56):
but currently we are still a financing company.
So that still correlates withour original identity, but right
now we're financing cleanenergy projects.
We say we're financing theclean energy transition across
Africa, we're financing thefuture of energy, and so we're
still providing financing tosmall businesses, to individuals
(37:19):
, to large corporations who arebuilding alternative means to
energy.
A couple of years ago we tookoff the subsidy in Nigeria.
Energy prices skyrocketed.
I think Nigeria has always beenon this cusp of clean energy
transition but never reallytaken the leap because we always
(37:39):
had oil to go back on.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
And I think that single-hand move.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
As horrible as it was at the time, it definitely
forced us to think outside thebox.
So hospitals, health careproviders, core social
infrastructure, could no longerrely on generator Diesel costs
fuel costs had skyrocketed torun these businesses or these
places of social net, socialsafety nets for their
(38:05):
communities.
And so we started looking atsolar, wind, different types of
batteries, just to close thatgap.
And so, again, we were anexperience.
We understand the small andmedium-sized business space.
We know how to clearly definecredit worthy businesses.
Why don't we just see this asan opportunity?
And so we started off as a newproduct.
(38:28):
So we created a solar financingproduct alongside our original
product, then just became thecall.
We started to see the growth,we saw the opportunity and again
, we always wanted to build abusiness that was impact focused
.
So with this you can actuallytangibly not that our previous
business wasn't impact focused,but this is more tangible
(38:49):
because you can see that directimpact on a day-to-day and so we
did the pivot and Dami and Iknew that we also needed to
rebrand.
Just coming out of hell, comingout of the co-founder's speech,
change of strategic, change ofthe company, our vision.
We felt that the name Payhipowas very much connected to
(39:11):
payment banking.
We were trying to be a businessbank for Africa.
We had even bought a bank andso we needed to rebrand and let
people know that this is our newfocus and our direction.
The name Reevee, as you askedasked, is a Hindu word that's
associated with brilliance andlight and sunlight and
(39:32):
personally I felt like I'd beengiven a second chance to shine
and so, yeah, we're very excitedabout the name change, our team
.
We revealed the name to ourteam before we did the general
public and I think everyone wasjust excited about the potential
and the possibility.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Congratulations on that.
And how have you handled thetransition from PayHippo to Rivi
in terms of branding andpositioning and getting the name
out there?
Speaker 2 (40:00):
We worked with a fantastic PR company, PR
communication company.
I definitely had Dami and Iinitially thought we could do
this ourselves and I just said,no, we're going to mess it up
and I'm just coming fromclearing up a mess.
I felt that we needed an expertwho understood how to
communicate this acrossdifferent stakeholders.
One, we're communicating to theteam, then we're communicating
(40:21):
to investors, then we'recommunicating to the ecosystem
of technology, then we're alsosignaling to the energy
ecosystem that, hey, there's anew player here.
Then the biggest pie was ourcustomer.
I love Nigerians, I love myhome, but I could easily see
them going.
Rivi, I don't know Rivi, I knowPei Heko.
(40:45):
And so I remember working with aPR company and I said my
customers are the most importantgroup here, because they need
to understand what we're nowproviding and the usefulness of
it to them.
Let them know that it's thesame team, the same group, it's
not a fraudulent company who'scoming over to confuse you.
And so we did really well inlaunching that.
(41:08):
We had multiple steps, from thecolor, the identity, defining
our tagline and then, obviously,the community outreach.
I have a great team that I workwith, so my marketing team, my
sales team it was all hands ondeck.
It was like a startup 2.0.
So, again, everybody wasvaluable in this process.
(41:29):
We needed everyone's inputcustomer success team, my tech
team, just everyone all hands ondeck.
And and I would say it was asuccess it has been so smooth
and easy.
It's almost like sometimes Iforget that it's happened
because people have just goneinto.
Hey, I read about what you guysare now doing, tell me about
(41:50):
the shift, tell me about thechange, like, okay, this went
out smooth.
But once in a while Dami and Iin meetings would say, hey, you
poets doing this and we'd haveto correct ourselves.
So we're still actually stayingterminally in-house.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
The point on using a PR company so well taken.
I think that it can take a lotof stress out of the process of
repositioning and you mentionedthat this was like startup 2.0.
Are there lessons from thefirst time round that you took
into this and implemented as youwere rolling out this rebrand,
the?
Speaker 2 (42:26):
first one, I'd say, was really understanding our
ecosystem.
I think we were playing in afinancial space and we
downplayed the potential forfraud rings or just fraud
attempts on our system, and sowe successfully upgraded our
tech.
We built our tech completelyin-house.
Nigerian tech gurus that I'm soproud of Kudos to them, kudos,
(42:50):
kudos.
Every day.
I see them.
I'm incredibly impressed.
And so we upped our security.
We increased the way that weverify, we underwrite, we
partnered with other innovatorsin the ecosystem and layering
their own innovation indifferent ways on top of ours,
(43:10):
whether that's geolocation orpulling into various databases
across the country to ensurethat you're properly defining,
then also using AI.
With our credit underwriting,we have five years of data of
seeing different types ofbusinesses across different
(43:31):
sectors, different performancedata.
We have key indicators nowwhere, almost from the jump, we
can say this is high risk orthis is the amount we should
give.
We can go past this.
This business is located inTremas village.
How safe is that?
What's the access?
So we're looking at differentthings beyond just the amount of
(43:55):
money that a company makes.
We're looking at environmentalfactors, we're looking at
accessibility, but that isn'tstopping us from pushing into
less accessible places, butwe're a bit more clear on what
our risk factors are.
We built in an engineering riskteam, yeah, and so, yeah, so
we've put in those measures forthat.
Another one I'll talk about isaround co-founder relationships.
(44:18):
I think it's just knowing thatif you've never had this, thank
your stars.
But I think this is somethingthat can happen to anyone and
it's very important how this issomething that can happen to
anyone and it's very importanthow this is managed and it could
come from different places.
It could just be misalignedvision.
It could also just be aco-founder who's burnt out or
exhausted and cannot carry onone of my.
When I look back now, I thinkone of the things that helped
(44:39):
was, at the beginning, justreally defining and that and I
mean that from a legalperspective right and really
understanding what each persondid and how that contributed to
the company growth, so that whenyou're having to unravel, it's
a lot easier because you alreadyhave things around.
Who owns the IP?
It's not owned by an individual, it's owned by this company.
(45:00):
What are our non-competeclauses Do we have?
Speaker 1 (45:03):
any.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
NDAs and just making sure that you have that from day
one so that if, along the road,you do face any bumps or
misunderstandings where you haveto split and go your separate
ways, it's a lot easier todetangle or untangle.
But there were two key things Ithink that we missed out on
(45:25):
doing, and that's reallydefining our decision-making
process.
So we were a co-founding teamof three and we had it written
somewhere in terms of two boardscan approve, but I still think
that we could have been a lotmore clearer on that
decision-making process becausethat led to us making mistakes
(45:45):
on other things.
And please, from day one, havea board.
Yes, business partners, businessoperators, founders needed a
board from day one.
We were advised that we didn'tneed one until Really yes, and I
don't know why that happened.
I still don't understand that,but a lot of tech founders or
(46:07):
tech companies at the time wouldtell you that you didn't need a
board until I think it wasseries A and it had something to
do with the equity and all ofthat stuff and the commitment
and the time plus.
Also, a board can reallyobstruct you from the type of
innovation that you want, and Ido get all of that for checks
and balances you need to afford,and so, in hindsight, we would
(46:31):
have set one up from the jump.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Thanks for sharing that.
Coming back to Rivi, I readthat you've already deployed,
dispersed, over $2 million inclean energy loans and I
wondered if you could share notto put you on the spot, maybe
one example of a success storyof one of your companies just
(46:53):
showing some real world impactfor Rivi.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
Oh, I have tons, but I'll speak on two One short one
and one long one.
One is a healthcare operator,like a pharmacist that stores
medication and injections and Idon't want to say pharmacist,
but more a middleman in thehealthcare sector, and so power
supply for them isnon-negotiable.
You can't even imagine a momentwhere they're disconnected from
(47:19):
the grid or people who are?
listening that are not familiar.
Nigeria gets power from thegreen maybe three hours a day,
if at all, on average, and sothese operators need an
alternative source of source ofenergy, and so working with us
one the financing option allowsthem to not completely pour out
(47:39):
all their funds into the highcapital cost it takes to acquire
solar or whatever alternativethey choose to go with.
So with us we could spreadthose payments.
It's not heavy on the business,and then they're also able to
provide their own services totheir customers.
Healthcare is life-saving.
We would not know the amount oflives that could be impacted or
(48:03):
be lost if they don't haveaccess to medicine on time or
properly stored medication.
So for us, that's one of thehuge ways that we're seeing
impact in Nigeria.
Another one example is we'reworking with microgrid
installers who are installinglarger energy provision for, say
(48:25):
, universities or largebusinesses, and with that group
we're just thinking beyond yourtraditional finance.
We're thinking how can we beinnovative with the finance that
they can access to really scalewhat they're doing?
And so we're looking atsomething called carbon
financing, which is anothertechnicality for another option
(48:47):
for innovative finance forlarger energy providers who are
in the clean energy space.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
So coming back to funding, you've raised over what
?
$15 million in a mix of equityand debt.
I was reading and I wonder whatadvice you would give to
founders, especially women, whoare navigating the question of
whether to raise debt or equity.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Wow.
Yes, every time I hear thatfigure, even I sometimes I'm
shocked because it was learningfor me.
I'd never raised money before.
So everything that I've done onthat front I've had to learn
the goal front.
I've had to learn the goal.
So I'd say one of the biggestthing I can say to anyone is
(49:32):
focus on your profit margin,really understand your
projections.
So where are you as a companynow?
Are you profitable?
If you're not, how long does ittake you to get to
profitability?
That's step one, so you reallyunderstand the health of your
finances within this businessthat you're building.
Some businesses in some sectorsdo not give away any equity at
(49:53):
all.
So, for instance, if from dayone, you're making a million
dollars a month, you might notneed the type of equity that,
say, a company like mine neededfrom being one.
I sat in a room with a techfounder who described to us that
his first raise was $350,000,and his second raise was $350
(50:14):
million.
He didn't do any raise inbetween.
So his company got toprofitability really quickly.
He was able to sustain and growthe business.
So he wanted to hold as muchequity because for every raise
that you do get diluted becauseyou're giving away more of your
company, and so I would say fora founder or entrepreneur,
really understand that equitybalance.
(50:37):
see where your business is at ifyou really do need it for debt.
For a company like us who lends, debt is our milking cow.
Basically, we do need to raisedebt to lend to our customers,
and so for us, that is ano-brainer.
But again, one of the things Ilove about debt is it makes you
a bit more conscious, probablymore than equity, because you do
(51:00):
have to repay your debt.
And when we're raising debt fromsayfis or other financial
institutions, there's a lot ofscrutiny on us.
So you can't just walk into anyplace and say, hey, I need 100
million dollars debt.
They're going to look throughyour books, they're going to
look through your performance,they're going to qualify you as
high risk or low risk, and so ifyour business isn't at the
(51:21):
point where you would pass, say,a due diligence for a debt,
raise, give yourself time,understand your core and if,
honestly, you can really runyour business profitable from an
early stage, keep it at thatuntil maybe you want to do
something huge.
Say you want to expand to adifferent geographic location.
So say you're working out ofAfrica and suddenly you want to
(51:44):
build, expand your business intoEurope or the?
U, you do need that injection ofcapital then you have a need
for it don't give away too muchequity and please have a board.
So it could be an advisoryboard initially, but just have
that for your checks andbalances duly noted.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
So I'm going to ask you to put on your policy hat
for a little bit.
You're building into highlyregulated industries finance and
energy.
How is Rivi adapting to theregulatory landscape in Nigeria
and what's it been like for youso starting?
Speaker 2 (52:19):
from the fintech space.
It was confusing in thebeginning.
In 2019, the ecosystem wasliterally just booming,
especially the fintech space,and even the regulators were
confused.
What's happening?
Who are you?
Why are you doing this?
You don't have the rightlicense, we're stopping your
business.
And a lot of tech founders tookthat in a very negative way,
(52:42):
almost defining that thegovernment didn't like us or
what we were doing.
But because I had a policybackground, I completely
understood where they werecoming from, like, we need
regulation, we need tounderstand what they're doing.
But at the time, we weren'tspeaking to each other, but the
tech companies were speaking toeach other and there was just a
disconnect, I would say, overtime.
So from about 2020 till now,there's been a lot of the
(53:05):
government coming to techfounders or the ecosystem and
saying, hey, we're seeinginsurance tech.
Can we have a conversationaround?
What does this mean?
What are your licenses?
Okay, the license we have, doesit really fit a fintech or is
this more for a larger insurancecompany?
I'm just using that as anexample.
So we started talking more toeach other and you will notice
that the regulatory landscapehas changed over time.
(53:27):
So I'm a lender.
Who's my regulator?
Do I fall under the centralbank, do I fall under the
Securities Exchange Commissionor?
am I just under the stateregulator, and so there's a lot
more transparency with that.
The local legal companiesunderstand the landscape very
well, and so we rely heavily onthem.
So I have an incredible, uh bigroutine, and so every time we
(53:50):
want to make a move, hey, canyou check that?
What we're doing?
In the beginning tech companiesweren't checking.
We're just jumping, I'mstarting this company, I'm going
consequences later.
But I think now that for uswe've run a business for six
years, that would be quite.
It was wonderful.
So we're more on it withensuring that we're falling into
the proper regulations forfintech and now for the
(54:12):
cleantech space.
We're also going to be playingin the voluntary capital markets
.
Okay for nigeria, which isstill being designed at the
moment.
Again, we've come into a spacewhere there's almost no
regulation in that sense for thecarbon market, because it's
really new for the ecosystemhere, and so we're co-defining,
we're co-building, we'respeaking to the government,
(54:34):
they're speaking to us just toensure that nobody makes any
mistakes that are costly.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
Fantastic.
Shifting a little, you'vementioned in the past that
motherhood played a big role inyour journey as an entrepreneur
and I wonder if you can sharehow becoming a mom shaped, how
you lead, prioritize and evenshow up as a founder.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
Oh, being a mom just changed my whole life, and I
would say changed my life more,because I actually never wanted
to be a mom.
So it was one of those thingsthat um yes, but that's another
story for another podcast.
And so this came into my lifeand just completely, I'll say,
prior to my baby, I did notnecessarily have a work-life
(55:18):
balance.
I worked all the time having himhas taught me to slow down, not
to to stop, but to slow down toreflect on my achievements, to
take them in.
It helped me define myself inspaces.
So my son would walk up to mewhen he was about 18 months and
(55:39):
he'd say, and I thought tomyself oh my God, he sees me
working all the time.
He needs to see me in differentspaces where I'm having fun and
laughing and relaxed.
And so I'm more conscious ofthat and I'll just say he's made
me more a conscious human beingand just more gracious to
myself and appreciating all thework that I've done all these
(56:00):
years and my strengths and myweaknesses, and just almost
giving myself a pat on the backwhich I didn't know how to do
before.
Speaker 1 (56:08):
I like that.
I like that a lot.
So, just in wrapping up, Iwanted to find out what's next
for Rivi and are there anyexciting developments or markets
you're looking to expand to?
Or is this really just aNigeria play, nigeria?
Speaker 2 (56:25):
gets me so excited.
I can't even Nigeria play.
Nigeria gets me so excited Ican't even believe how much it
gets me this excited.
It shouldn't, because if you'reNigerian, all the parts of
living here that are reallystressful.
So for us right now, we've donethe rebrand.
We're taking over the space.
Nigeria is a huge market.
I don't think we're able tocover 5% of that yet.
(56:45):
Nigeria is a huge market.
I don't think we're able tocover 5% of that yet, and so we
really want to take our time andgo deep in this market.
We do have to bring Banshanagain into potentially West
Africa.
When we think about carbonfinance, that's the most
exciting part for me.
I haven't talked about it a loton this podcast because it's
still being fleshed out.
(57:05):
We've been building, we'restill working with our technical
partners, but on that plate itallows us to spread across
Africa and that gives us theconfidence to say, hey, we're
building financing for Africa,because with that plate we're
not bound by geography, and Ithink it just creates another
opportunity for the continent.
So many of the continents havebeen doing this for years and
(57:27):
we're only just coming into it.
I'm excited that we're a bitmore conscious and green.
Now knows.
Oh, we're going off the gridbecause we're switching to solar
.
It's like normal conversationin his vocabulary, rather than
saying we're switching to thegenerator money, and so that for
me, is also a sign that, justas we did with credit, teachings
(57:51):
the benefits of credit, I thinkwe're also doing that again in
the market, where we're pushingthis green transition that's
fantastic.
Speaker 1 (58:00):
you, earlier on, you spoke about how having your son
helped you stop and appreciatethe work that you're doing and
pat yourself on the back, so I'mgoing to give you a chance to
do that right now.
Looking back on your journey,what would you say is one or
maybe two of your proudestachievements so far?
Speaker 2 (58:21):
One or two of my proudest achievements.
I think building in Africa isone of my proudest achievements.
I think building in Africa isone of my proudest achievements.
I always just thought I wasgoing to be working in a company
and just be here, but I knewthat I wanted to really create
change, whatever that looks like, and I'm so thankful that I was
given the opportunity to dothis and that I grabbed that
(58:44):
opportunity and I built Peypawand from that journey I've now
built Reevee and continue tobuild.
I'm really proud of that andI'm also proud of being a mom
and and what that means for myfamily and for my son we can
tell.
Speaker 1 (59:00):
So in terms of advice , I always ask my guests to give
advice.
What advice would you give toother women who are building or
running businesses in Africa?
Speaker 2 (59:09):
building anything in Africa, doing anything in Africa
.
As a woman, it can be toughbecause we come from a
patriarchal culture and we knowwhat that means.
One of the things I always sayis I pick one or two women who I
had seen two incredible thingson the continent and realized
that they even came from a timebefore this time where there was
(59:32):
more resistance to theirsuccess and to their growth.
And what I learned from that,and I tell myself and I tell
other people, is stay the course, don't give up too soon, drill
deeper, because sometimes you'rein the same spot but you're
going deeper.
So externally it might looklike you're not going further,
(59:53):
but you're draining deeper.
Never be afraid when petrokeylooks at you in the face, just
look at it back and push on andjust stay the course, because
there's so much that comes fromjust refusing to give up so soon
as women in Africa who arebuilding the ripple effect is
incredible.
I cannot tell you the number ofyounger women or even my peers
(01:00:18):
who say I'm so inspired by this.
Oh my God, I can't believe youdid this.
I'm going to do this, I can'tbelieve you did this, I'm going
to do this, or inspire you moreto start that company to grow,
even within the nine to fivespace, and just push for
whatever's been determined asimpossible and just believing
that you can actually do it.
Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
Fantastic, fantastic.
Thank you so much, emma.
And finally, how can ourlisteners learn more about Rivi
or get involved in supportingyour mission?
Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Thank you.
So for any updates on Rivi,we're online across all the
social media platforms at RiviHQ so you can follow our
progress and our journey.
If you're in Nigeria and you'rerunning a business, or you're
home and you're looking toswitch to solar, we are more
than excited to provide thefinancing required for that at
(01:01:12):
this initial stage, and once wehave new products, we will
definitely let the greaterpublic know about these.
Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
This has been an insightful conversation.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much, thank youfor having me.
Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
I've really enjoyed talking to you.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for having me.
I've really enjoyed talking toyou.
Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
Thank you so much for listening.
If you're not alreadysubscribed, please do so on
Apple, spotify or wherever youget your podcasts, and don't
forget to leave us a review sowe know how we're doing.
I'm Akego Okoye and you havebeen listening to African
Business Stories.
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