By Nnamdi Ojiego

The Co-founder and President of PennyTree, a digital lifestyle platform using Artificial Intelligent (AI) features, Mr. Ayo Ogunlowo, has described digital media as an effective tool for the socio-economic growth and prosperity of Nigeria.

Ogunlowo stated this during the fifth edition of the Lagos Digital Summit, LDS, held at the Zone Tech Park, Gbagada, Lagos, on Friday.

The summit themed: “Digital Media as a Tool for Business Growth”, is targeted at brand and communication managers, technopreneurs, digital media strategists, SME owners/managers, start-ups, MDAs, corporate bodies, tech compliant and adaptive firms, and the general public.

The fintech executive said digital media has become one of the major components for data analysis for business decisions and marketing of products and services.

Speaking at a panel session tagged, “Business and the use of digital”, Ogunlowo, who is also the CEO of Treegar, an investment platform to trade and invest in stocks listed on the NYSE and NASDAQ, explained that financial technology has positively impacted business operations and demystified financial education and inclusion.  

Endless Possibilities

 According to him, “the African fintech ecosystem has attracted foreign investors from across the world due to its emerging and promising scale which has grown over the years. Having Co-founded a couple of financial and digital-enabled businesses such as PennyTree and Treegar, the possibilities for me remain endless and we are keeping up with the trajectory of evolution. 

600 startups

 “Just in the first half of the year 2021, startups secured around $330 million to scale services such as payments and remittances, lending, blockchain, savings/investment and digital banking. Despite the inherent currency risks, the scale of financial transactions and activities in Africa has birthed over 600 startups supporting the ecosystem.

“Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya lead the pack; constituting approximately 70% of the entire African fintech market and emerging opportunities. African fintech startups are far more likely to raise funding or get acquired, than a company operating in any other sector of the continent’s growing tech and innovation space. 

“With data and analysis of the market getting cleaner and better, startup founders in Africa can make informed decisions concerning their product-market fit and customer behaviour, providing insight into better onboarding and providing services to more users. By forming smart ventures, the ecosystem is scaling fast and attracting increasing investments and curiosity by both retail and institutional investors.”

PennyTree

Giving an example of PennyTree as one of the possibilities of digital media, the former Access Bank staff who co-led the Group Program Management Office, with projects worth over $5m under his purview, said his company is a fintech application with first of its kind products in Africa called ‘Penn Rules’.  

He said: “PennyTree offers basic financial services such as savings, locked funds, payments and transfers. It is also a gamified digital lifestyle platform that will integrate and enable seamless savings, payments transfers, through a scalable ecosystem built into the lifestyle of the target customers.

“Just as a tip into the above feature (Penn Rules), current users can save as they pay for utilities and other bills and as a next update include gamification of savings routine by telling PennyTree to automatically debit you when you visit certain locations in your city or use certain applications beyond a set period. 

Affinitive Ecosystem

“PennyTree is making savings and wealth building more fun and enjoyable by building an affinitive ecosystem; creating a clan of financially savvy customers who would automate wealth as they build their lifestyle. The opportunities are endless”, the Treegar boss stated.

Earlier, the Convener of the summit, Wale Adetona, explained that LDS was birthed five years ago as a platform to help individuals and businesses harness the potentials of digital media and also provide an avenue for networking with like-minded individuals, enhancing information sharing, while giving people much greater access to facts, figures and statistics.

Impacts

 “Our aim is to improve digital infrastructure, strengthen digital platforms, increase access to digital financial services, improve the policy environment for digital entrepreneurship and close the digital skills knowledge gap.

 “The impact of the summit since its inception cannot be overlooked. We have had an average of 1,000 participants for each of the editions, who have been empowered with diverse digital skills for their businesses”, Adetona noted.