In a Nigerian society where sources of income to finance and build businesses are so limited and are not easily forthcoming, entrepreneurs look for different ways to sustain and keep their business ventures going to maximise profits.

It is not surprised however that when Sydney Imuetinyan Aigbogun was confronted with paucity of fund when he set up Cashbox, an online saving platform, he had to adopt bootstrapping to ensure that there is enough cash flow to keep the business going.

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Bootstrapping is a process whereby an entrepreneur starts a self-sustaining business, markets it, and grows the business by using limited resources or money. This is accomplished without the use of venture capital firms or even significant angel investment.  

“Since we started Cashbox, w have been bootstrapping and always finding ways to grow our business and make users have a better experience as they save money. To reduce cost of operation, we’ve had to be hands-on on everything. Almost all of our work is in-house, we contract very little things out, that has helped reduce our cost,” saidSydney Imuetinyan Aigbogun .

According to  Sydney Imuetinyan Aigbogun, getting support from people around him to support his business idea was a big setback for him, not until he faced the reality of going alone before he could have a successful way out. 

“At our early stage, there was problem of funding and how he could get help from the networks around me.  I used to have so many meetings with prospective investors that never yielded anything. It used to be so frustrating. So instead of all the many meetings, I channeled my energy towards our product and that has yielded so much more,” he said.

Giving details about the services and operations of Cashbox, the graduate of Finance from the University of Lagos told journalists during a recent interview that “CashBox was founded in January 2019. We are an online savings platform. We are helping thousands of users cultivate a healthy savings habit where users can easily download our app on android and iOS, link their ATM card to the app and create a savings plan stating how much they would like to save and the frequency swell. Everything is controlled by the user from the app.

“More importantly, CashBox is a technology-based solution of helping everyone make smart financial decisions. The app is saving made easy. We didn’t want the saving process to be done like the traditional way most people are used to. With the help of technology which we heavily rely on, it has helped us achieve a lot and even do a lot more in the future,”said Sydney Imuetinyan Aigbogun.

From 2019 when the online retail banking was birthed and had since been recording some levels of success with its popularity among Nigerians, Aigbogun revealed that it is not an easy journey as there are some toughest moments, but with determination and a good team working with him, he was able to overcome the challenges.

“Initially, the problems we used to face was waking up to so many errors with our app and complaints from customers, that is an experience that I wouldn’t forget. We had a lot of errors going on, people couldn’t save and the app was having issues. My team and I didn’t sleep for almost like 48 hours till we resolved the issues. This happened in our first year though and we immediately put in measures for it never to happen again.

“People were initially scared of CashBox, especially our first six months in operation, but right now that’s no longer a worry for us. Our presence online is very visible and they see so many reviews from users saving with us, seeing these reviews gives new customers confidence in us and it makes us happy that we are doing the right,”said Sydney Imuetinyan Aigbogun, who has experience in consumer finance, asset management and foreign exchange trades.