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Nigeria hasn’t been left out of this evolution. While it struggled to join the tech train earlier on, it’s now fully on board. The numerous tech ventures, the solutions they’ve built, and the rate at which those solutions have been adopted, are all testament to this. Softcom, a tech product developer, is one of the earlier players in Nigeria’s technology ecosystem. Headquartered in Lagos and boasting a nationwide reach, this company is known for offerings that span finance, retail, fashion, food, and other industries. Its customer base comprises individuals and small businesses, as well as larger organizations. Yomi Adedeji and Omoseindemi Olobayo founded Softcom in 2007. They did so with the intention of helping businesses to scale by utilizing contemporary technologies. Both are alumni of Covenant University and the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. One solution available from Softcom is Kwiksell, a platform which enables its users to sell products across their websites, social media, and physical store. With it, they can receive payments via debit card, QR, bank transfer and USSD, as well as cash. They can also track their business’s performance, reconcile its accounts, and work with the insights it generates to improve their processes.
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Eyowo, another of Softcom’s offerings, is a digital bank which has its users’ phone numbers as its account number. It allows them to save money and earn interest on it, send funds to any bank account or to a recipient’s phone number, and receive money via a payment link that they’ve created and shared with the sender. An Eyowo account comes with a secure card as well, details of which can be accessed on the platform’s mobile app. Softcom has also developed Usepass, an identity verification tool. Individuals and businesses can utilize it to create, share and authenticate IDs. Usepass guarantees several use cases, including identifying new employees at work, confirming the identity of visitors, and managing entry at a special access or paid event. Apart from its finance, retail and access control solutions, Softcom also offers Useform, a product that enables businesses and other organizations to create forms for various purposes, distribute them to a large number of potential respondents, and collect feedback from them. Useform may be used to gather polling data, request payment, collect project requirements, and ask for information. Beyond its core business, Softcom organizes LIFT, a 6-week virtual program for entrepreneurs. The company says that this program equips business owners with the tools, knowledge, coaching, and capital they need to scale their enterprises. It also connects them with a community of peers from which they can learn and receive support.
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The industry in which Softcom plays is radically different from what it was when the company entered it in the late 2000s. It is thanks in part to firms like it that the ecosystem has recorded giant strides. It will be interesting to see what it achieves in the coming years. Featured Image Source: RefinedNG
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