Africa’s Neobank Pivo, these (women) are building for the Supply Chain Industry

Prior to the meeting of  Nkiru Amadi-Emina and Ijeoma Akwiwu at a birthday party in Abuja, Nigeria.

 They realized they could make promising friends; what they didn’t know was, they would make good co-founders as well. But 8 years into their friendship, they have erected and operated a team of programs and businesses concurrently, and, presently, they are concentrated on edifice Pivo, a startup they fantasize will be the neobank for trade in Africa.

The enormous idea is to be the go-to neobank for trade in Africa by the end of this year, or next.

Pivo immigrated the market with Pivo Capital, a credit-focused economic services program for supply chain,  small and medium businesses (SMEs), because of the co-founders’ track record in the supply chain industry, especially the logistics aspect.

Long before Pivo, Amadi-Emina, a software engineer, worked as a tech consultant for Nigeria’s electoral body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), for over 2 years. She left INEC in 2017 to found her first startup Jalo, a venture-backed on-demand delivery company that focused on Nigeria’s North-Central market and served e-commerce platforms like Jumia and Konga in that region.

In August 2018, Amadi-Emina joined Kobo360 after the logistic startup acquired Jalo in an acquihire deal. She remained at Kobo360 for a little over 3 years before leaving last year to focus on Pivo.

For Akwiwu, a trained lawyer who alleged to have wobbled on tech by opportunity and the effect of friends like Amadi-Emina, her law career, which commenced officially in 2013, vaulted across law firms and companies like Gilmor Engineering, one of the enormous engineering companies in Nigeria, where she specialized for over 6 years.

Nevertheless, she started dabbling with project and product management and operations, monitoring projects, and product development lifecycles on the side. Last year, she decided to change wholly into tech. She left law to concentrate on edifice Pivo and earn a master’s degree in software development while at it.

With Amadi-Emina’s understanding of the logistics side of the supply chain, having specialized and led the port operation accomplishment at Kobo360, Akwiwu’s understanding in law, and their combined knowledge of operating an exportation company, inventing a corporation that serves the logistics branch of the supply chain was a no-brainer.

About Pivo Africa. 

In Africa, the logistics supply chain is Pivo’s first stop access to credit, it is still one of the enormous challenges small businesses deal with, primarily small supply chain businesses. Supply chain businesses often possess a brief period to execute a contract, and outstanding to the unreasonable bureaucracy and various prerequisites, amassing credit from established financial institutions receives an extended duration, hence these industries are automatically at a flaw. This is where Pivo comes in.

Inaugurated in September last year, Pivo provides adaptable and immediate financing substitutes for supply chain businesses like logistics service providers, clearing and forwarding businesses, and FMCG distributors. Pivo is like a third-party partner in a transaction between a buyer and a seller. But to understand what Pivo does, one must first understand how supply chain financing works.

Supply chain finance is a variety of cash improvement suppliers receive from lenders to fulfill a trade or contract before the customer pays them.

Pivo profiles the business yearning for credit for worthiness operates a risk appraisal on the transaction and then proceeded to the files, the businesses they are doing the transaction with, to verify whether they are reliable and profitable for the money.

Once everything explores and the customer concedes to disburse into the supplier’s Pivo account, Pivo then disburses the loan. In partnership with Providus Bank.

Pivo gives its customers a business account that promotes remittance. So, after the money arrives in the supplier’s Pivo account, the startup receives its dues.