In African General Trade, a sales representative has barely 7 minutes per customer. Currently, that time is consumed by checking stock and manual bookkeeping, leaving zero room to pitch new products or build strategy. For global brands, this creates a data “black hole.” No real-time visibility into customer inventory. No insight into end-user basket sizes. No digital communication channel to deliver messages and promotions. This lack of light on your business may be the most expensive line item on your P&L.

By removing the “7 minute cap” per customer visit with Boost’s WhatsApp self-ordering solution, Boost empowers MSME business owners to browse, discover, and plan their stock 24/7. The results in higher Average Order Values and a sales team that is finally free to focus on upselling rather than manual order taking.

The Shift: From Assisted to Self-Ordering

Working with partner FMCG leaders across Africa like Unilever, we are proving that digitizing distribution is not just about efficiency, but about revenue velocity.

What we are seeing in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya:

• 20 - 55% higher basket value from self-ordering customers compared to assisted ordering

• 90% of manual ordering activity digitized into structured data

• 3 - 4 days per month recovered from manual reconciliation

• 85% smartphone penetration with ubiquitous WhatsApp usage, even in peri-urban and rural areas

The Radically Easy Model: We meet the market where it is. Using a data-light WhatsApp interface, designed for one-tap selections, wholesalers, sub-distributors and retailers can self-order, plan stock, and access promotions you want them to see. This frees your sales team to move from order-takers to growth consultants focused on cross-selling and upselling rather than chasing paperwork.

Across Africa, underserved territories represent at least a 20 - 30% expansion opportunity for distributors willing to digitize.

The Market Reality & AI Foundation: Africa’s digitally-savvy retail landscape is ready for transformation; by digitizing the General Trade today, businesses secure immediate market share and create the essential data infrastructure for AI innovations and integration.

If you are ready to power your distribution network with radically easy ordering, let’s talk. Email info@boost.technology to see Boost’s Platform-as-a-Service in action.

Follow the discussion on LinkedIn!

About Boost: Boost is a global platform that powers the General Trade with radically easy WhatsApp ordering, offline-enabled sales tools, and end-to-end distribution management tools, integrated with digital payment and credit solutions through our partnership with Mastercard.

#LastMile #SupplyChainAfrica #DigitalTransformation #FMCG #CPG #Agribusiness #Boost #AfricaGrowth

By 2050, Africa’s population will reach 2.5 billion people across 54 countries. For an African girl born today, her continent will add an additional 1 billion people – or three times the current population of the United States – before her 26^th birthday.

The implications of this are hard to fathom. On one hand, the one-directional march towards ubiquitous smartphone penetration, 5G internet and artificial intelligence (AI) poses tremendous commercial and impact opportunities. On the other hand, the pace and change of progress will vary significantly between and within countries, and the increased stresses on already insufficient infrastructure, services and jobs could lead to severe socio-economic failures. 

These opposing forces are already playing out today in Africa’s supply chains. Most African consumers buy their essential goods and services like soap, toothpaste and food from local micro-retail stores. These “retailers” are in turn supplied by family-owned, small and medium, distribution and wholesale businesses that move products on behalf of global and local manufacturers. Typically, these “last mile” supply chain businesses operate offline, trade in cash and lack sufficient working capital to meet their current demand – despite the smartphones, tablets and computers their owners may have access to. As a result, African supply chains are rife with both inefficiencies and inconsistencies that depress growth for everyone.

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Finding solutions to these challenges at the scale required to meet the need is why Boost has partnered with Mastercard. Mastercard’s mission is “to connect and power an inclusive digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart and accessible.” They have pioneered digital inclusion since their founding nearly 60 years ago and have built one of the most trusted brands on the planet. Just last year, Mastercard had 3 billion cards in circulation and processed 9 trillion digital payment transactions.

Boost’s numbers are of course tiny in comparison. But all things big and global once started small and local (including Mastercard). Making the leap requires the ability to “scale infinitely,” which is driven by smart design, relentless execution and the right partnerships.  

Boost’s multi-tenant, multi-language Platform-as-a-Service is already serving dozens of distributors and wholesalers supplying 15,000 retailers across West, East, South and North Africa. By partnering with Mastercard, Boost will expand to offer two new critical components to any user in any of our current or future markets: 

• First, Boost will develop the ability to offer Mastercard’s payment acceptance and issuing solutions, including a stored value wallet. This will be a giant step towards creating cashless supply chains that will bring down the costs of getting essential manufactured goods to consumers, especially in peri-urban and rural areas. 

• Second, Mastercard will enable Boost to tap into its vast network of banks and payment providers so that Boost can become a conduit to provide embedded supply chain financing. This will remove one of the greatest constraints to small business growth, while also opening up an opportunity for partner banks to profitably reach new customer segments that fall outside of their traditional distribution channels and risk models.

With Mastercard, Boost’s potential for infinite scale to power growth for millions of businesses across Africa and beyond is one step closer to reality. Let the partnership begin!

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I soon found co-founders who resonated with this WHY and were equally excited to build a company around it. However, we didn’t yet know WHAT the company would do. So instead, we thought deeply about HOW we would be successful by formulating hypotheses to the following key questions: 

First, HOW would Boost scale efficiently across multiple markets? 

• We knew the risks of being concentrated in a single market, and to capitalise on the size of the opportunity we would need to design for pan-African scale. We decided to focus on a large and ubiquitous pain point: Offline distribution in Africa’s informal convenience commerce market. We would build B2B partnerships to efficiently acquire customers, and design our technology platform and model to easily launch in any market, language, currency and segment.

Second, HOW would Boost localise in each market?  

• We knew a “one size fits all” model would not work in Africa. To have a chance of success, we would need an in-depth understanding of customer pain points and local contexts. We decided to recruit experienced local founders to run each market, enabled by a shared services venture building platform. We then developed a set of virtues, principles and norms to govern our ways of working and unite everyone around a “One Boost” culture.

Third, HOW would Boost differentiate? 

• We knew there were many other well-funded companies in our space, so Boost would need to take a different approach to stand out from the crowd. We decided to be a platform enabler of supply chains rather than participate in them, which meant embracing family-owned distributors and wholesalers as customers, not competitors. We would also optimise for capital efficiency (before it was in vogue) with the lowest possible headcount and an asset-zero model to enhance our resilience and scalability. 

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Reflecting back, our day-in, day-out execution to validate these hypotheses set the course to test, learn, iterate…and eventually figure out WHAT Boost would do:

Our model has three core components: 

• Platform-as-a-Service to digitise end-to-end distribution in opaque and offline channels to bring real-time visibility to retailers, orders, payments and inventory. With just 27 group employees and 0 physical assets, Boost added 2 markets in 2023, taking our total footprint to 6: Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Kenya and Egypt.

• Retailer Engagement to drive self-ordering and build a sales engine with direct-to-retailer digital insights, promotions and embedded credit. In 2023, we have increased monthly retention of 13,000 retailers to 95%. 

• Growth Services to develop and expand routes-to-market in untapped white spaces. We are building 2 multinational partnerships…stay tuned!

Boost started with WHY, but our future success will be achieved by focusing on HOW. If you have a manufacturing, distribution or wholesale business that could benefit from our services, or if you are interested in investing in us, please reach out at info@boost.technology. 

Thanks for following us on our journey to build Boost!

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Isaac Aidoo is the Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer of Boost Ghana. Read on to learn more!

How would you describe Isaac Aidoo to someone you recently met?

I would say that I am passionate about helping people. Anything that I can do to help people is what I live for. 

I’m also very data-driven and love analysing data to develop innovative products that ease the way of doing business for our customers who operate in the informal sector. When I’m not in the field, you will often find me writing SQL queries with customer data and testing product features. 

Looking back at your childhood in Ghana, what is one fond memory that stands out to you about interaction with informal retailers?

As a government worker, my mom had a side business to support my elder sister and me in school. At times, we would help her sell to make more money. I always watched her count her cash and calculate her margins, which were always very thin. This has always been a reference point for me whenever I interact with retailers, knowing that they are also working around the clock to support their children and dependents.

What aspect of the Boost proposition drew you to join as a co-founder of Boost Ghana?

Before Boost, I started a business called ConvyPlus that was collecting inventory data of small informal “supermarkets” in Accra. I built relationships with the owners and really got to understand their businesses and challenges, especially with procuring stock and managing working capital. It seemed these owners were spending most of their time at the open market trying to find products at good prices, and they almost always had empty shelves in their stores because they never had enough capital to buy what they needed.

I had known Joseph for many years and always wanted to work more closely with him, and both of us had previously worked with Mike. When we had our first call together, I realised we all shared the same desire to help small, convenience retail businesses and that working together would enable us to do this at scale. 

Tell us more about a great customer moment that speaks to the impact you’ve had?

I will give you two. First, I remember meeting a retail entrepreneur who could not read or write [Ghana’s literacy rate is 80%], and had never used a digital product before. She would use her mobile to make and receive calls, and managed her shop entirely in her head. We developed a very simple WhatsApp ordering product that uses only buttons and images, and now she places regular orders by herself. This inspires me and means that every retailer could use and benefit from our product. 

Second, another retailer recently told me that since using Boost, she almost feels lazy because she rarely has to go to the market to buy stock for her business. She used to go three times per week from 6 to 8am, so we have saved her all of that time, money and hassle. 

What’s your vision for Boost Ghana over the next 10 years? 

We want to scale up our platform to digitise and grow 1 million retail and distribution businesses in Ghana. This would make a major impact on Ghana’s economy and would improve the lives of many entrepreneurs. I believe we can do it!

Boost will be a purpose-driven company that will power growth for 10 million small businesses in order to create sustainable jobs and income for the future.

I have learned, as an entrepreneur, how important it is to dream big. A big vision attracts ambitious talent, great investors and helpful scaling partners. It also serves as a renewable source of energy to stay motivated through the inevitable ups and downs of company building. 

But I have also learned that a big vision means nothing without a plan for how to achieve it. So, in our first week of working together, my Boost co-founders and I got together and came up with the following principle: 

Design for Scale: We will start small but think big. Everything we do must have the potential to scale with a thoughtful roadmap for how to get there. We will learn from our past experiences and take care to avoid common scaling pitfalls, even if this slows us down in the short term.

Putting this principle in practice has enabled us to think differently and make some seemingly counterintuitive decisions. For example, we chose deliberately to launch Boost in three disparate markets at once: Ghana, South Africa and Nigeria. To increase the degree of difficulty, we chose to do this during COVID without being able to travel. 

A more conventional strategy would have seen us successfully launch in one market, and then raise a big round of investment to expand into others. However, we have all learned from past experiences that executing on this approach can lead to burnt cash, time and relationships:

• Technology and enabling infrastructure (i.e. brand, operations, finance, etc) become too localised and cannot scale without being rebuilt

• Decision making and control become over-concentrated with the original founders, who have intimate understanding of the first market, but not the expansion markets 

• New employees hired to lead expansion lack the entrepreneurial behaviours to start a new market from scratch and weren’t part of the first market’s success

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In contrast, Boost’s approach to launch three markets at once forced us to design every aspect of our business for multi-market scale right from day one:

• We designed a data-light technology platform to be easily launched across a diverse customer base in any market, and work in any currency and in any language

• We designed a value proposition to remotely recruit experienced local co-founders to adapt Boost to their markets (see our Founder Series featuring Noxolo Mthethwa, Koye Oyeyinka and Joseph Kuvor)

• We designed an operating model to push the boundaries of what it means to be asset and people-light in order to scale more efficiently with reduced management overhead (see my last blog)

We still have a long way to go to power growth for 10 million small businesses, but the leading indicators are positive. In 2022, Boost grew monthly order volume by 25x, serving 10 thousand active retailers across our first three markets while retaining a low, flat cost base and headcount. We also built an exciting pipeline of partnerships to accelerate into 2023. Our principle of designing for scale is what made this all possible. 

We had a chat with Koye Oyeyinka, the Co-founder and CEO of Boost Nigeria.

Koye believes in the power of tech to drive economic growth. Prior to Boost, he worked with Heineken and LVMH before launching Imni Global, an e-commerce site aiming to improve linkages between manufacturers and artisans across the textile, leather, and accessories markets in Nigeria. 

What stands out about Koye is his interest in building simple and intuitive systems to address complex problems in the informal sector.

Here’s a summary of our conversation with Koye, Enjoy!

How would you describe yourself to people reading a book about yourself?

My motto is beauty and efficiency. I believe beauty is what can be appreciated without explanation and efficiency is what can be utilised intuitively.

I studied economics to understand the structures that we collectively decide to engage in, like capitalism and religion, and I studied psychology to make sense of how we individually react to these structures. I believe our legacy is measured by the improvements we make to these structures.

At Boost we sit in a unique position where we have access to the tech, capital, experience and other resources needed to make the informal sector a bit more beautiful and efficient.

What is your earliest or fondest memory of spending money in your local neighbourhood convenience store?

When I was around seven years old, we lived at the bottom of a hill, and at the very top was a shop. The woman running the shop sold a few products, which included bread, biscuits, and kerosene. Since the bread’s taste was affected by the kerosene, I remember having to walk past the shop, hiding my face to go to the other bread sellers. 

I think this is my earliest memory of seeking quality service over convenience and of experiencing service differentiation.  

What do you think is great about owner-managed stores and the people behind the businesses?

I am impressed with the resilience of the retailers and their incessant hunger to grow their business. Many business owners run their businesses blindly, without the time and tools to  understand their profits or losses, or notice the systemic inefficiencies that hamper their growth. Their primary goal is to ensure the business is still running the next day.

I remember a retailer who started her business with a table and an umbrella, and has grown it now into a mini-mart(or a smaller supermarket). While interacting with her, you quickly note her intuitive understanding of the factors that have contributed to her growth.

We want to help formalise these insights through digitisation and marry this to her enthusiasm and curiosity for our product offerings to help her to continuously grow her business. 

What pushed you to join Boost as a Founder? What benefits do you see from the Boost network? 

When I launched my previous startup, it was to address the inefficiencies inherent in the informal retail sector that eventually trickled down as increased prices and poorer quality to customers; inefficient product sourcing, insufficient working capital, and insignificant size to profit from economies of scale. 

The Boost team came to me with a similar proposal, but in addition, they had an easy to use tech platform and other founders in other countries working to solve the same issues. 

It has been great working with teams from other markets. With an open-door policy in place, we’ve been able to bounce ideas off each other and transfer the lessons learned in similar markets.

For example, the Ghana team has been running Stock Boosts for a while now, and the South African team has a very particular way of working with key distributors. Having the specifics of how they run these operations has been very helpful.

How do you sell the Boost value proposition to customers or partners that already have working tech systems?

I am always excited about explaining the benefits of embracing our platform to the customer. Being open about how Boost works to benefit everyone in the retail value chain including the retailers and distributors.

We have different types of distributor customers. The first type considers us as a tech provider. With the second type of customer, we are fully integrated into their business, assisting with bookkeeping, stock analysis, and merchandising. We help them understand the products that move faster and how to capitalise on this information.

What do you like most about your customers?

I like the targeted curiosity of our customers. The ones who want to try new products to grow their businesses, but are quick to discard anything that adds complexity to them. 

I also like the self assurance of our customers who keep testing the product and are keen to point out the issues in the system that need improvements.

Looking five years or more into the future, what would you like to achieve in your country and across Africa?

Our goal is to make the retail sector, particularly the last mile and informal aspects which currently accounts for 70-90% of Nigeria’s trade, more efficient by digitising the sector, providing subsequent data visibility, and bringing-in the capital to help everyone in the value chain achieve their ultimate potential. We want to  be the  de facto solution for small and emerging manufacturers and up and coming distributors to scale quickly.

Additionally we will continue to provide support to the rest of the ecosystem, helping established manufacturers see up to the last mile while empowering distributors and wholesalers with the digital insights needed to manage, plan and expand their businesses.

We will end the year powering-growth to distributors serving 10k engaged retailers with over 90% retention. The goal is to double this number yearly, so we hope to have distributors serving between 100k and 150k retailers within five years.

At Boost, we have always believed that the secret to building an everlasting business was to design it for the bad times. My co-founders and I have all lived through enough cycles to know that what goes up must go down. So, at one of our very first virtual calls back in April 2020, we aligned on a set of founding principles for how we wanted to build our company. Here are three of them:

• Only the fewest right people: We resist hiring ahead of the curve and default to smaller teams of highly capable people who are rigorously screened. We only expand our circle when new roles are clearly defined and deemed absolutely essential.

• Digital-led, tech-enabled and asset light: We lead our customers with digital solutions, prioritising adoption and usage above all else. We build fit-for-purpose technology as a means and not an end, and we resist accumulating physical assets at all costs. 

• Enable the entrepreneurs: When faced with challenges, we always start by asking if there are entrepreneurs with skin-in-the-game who we can enable as customers or partners. We avoid insourcing and internalising solutions whenever possible.

We have stuck by these principles, knowing that they were true but not knowing the extent to which they would be tested. Fast forward to November 2022, and the results speak for themselves: 

With a low, flat cost base, Boost has grown monthly order volume by 20x in the past 9 months across 4 African markets. We have now processed 100k orders for 10k active retailers with 90% monthly retention. 

The truth is we are only getting started on our journey to power growth for distributors and retailers in Africa’s trillion dollar convenience economy. To stay posted, please follow Boost on LinkedIn and Twitter, and subscribe to our blog! :)

We recently caught up with Joseph Kuvor, the  Co-founder and CEO of Boost-Ghana. 

Joseph is a passionate leader with more than 17 years of experience across fintech, telecoms, banking and market research. He has worked in and consulted for various companies in Anglophone West, East and Southern Africa. These include Zoona, Airtel, Millicom (Tigo) and Fidelity Bank where he has grown his expertise in the use of data, customer insights and inclusive technology to create commercial value and achieve sustainable impact. 

Joseph also serves as an advisor on Bank of Ghana’s External Stakeholder Advisory Group for the Central Bank Digital Currency pilot.

What stood out in our conversation was his passion for building solutions that bring structure and efficiency to the vibrant informal sector to improve livelihoods and resilience for the millions who depend on it.

Here’s a summary of what he had to say. Enjoy!

How would you describe yourself in a few words?

It’s an interesting question because, having worked in customer-facing roles, I like people to experience me and playback what they observed. So far, what I’ve gathered in my interactions with others is that I am an impact-driven person and I always look to improve everything that I get involved in; this includes my work, social settings, the church, and everything else in my life.

What three phrases can you use to describe the accomplishments you’ve amounted in your career so far?

• A change agent: When I was leaving Airtel, the Managing Director used this phrase to describe my time working with the company.

• A data-driven professional: At Millicom / Tigo, my reputation was structured around my evidence-driven approach to my work.

• A passionate professional: This has been played back to me by colleagues and many other people that I have interacted with.

What would you like to achieve in Ghana that you’ve not accomplished yet?

Besides people, the two things I find very important everywhere I work are technology and data. More importantly, how to leverage them to bring structure and efficiency in the informal sector in order to improve business outcomes for our partners, customers, and the country at large. I would also like to see more females in leadership across all sectors of our national life.

What is your earliest/fondest memory of interacting with a local business or retailer that may have fueled your passion for using data to improve lives?

I come from a small town in the Volta Region of Ghana. My father was a teacher and my mother was a housewife who occasionally sold produce from our farm in the open market and had no way of knowing the fair value of their produce. This problem fueled my desire to support entrepreneurs in the informal sector.

When the idea of Boost popped up while talking to Isaac and Mike, what drove you to back the idea and eventually work on it?

In late 2019, Isaac and I were testing a product  to generate data that we could sell to distributors and marketers. This led us to discover the constant challenges retailers face with restocking their shops.

We had both worked with Mike previously, so when he shared his first pitch deck for Boost we immediately saw the synergies and decided to launch a pilot together. 

On those hard days when you are in the mud, what drives you to persevere?

What keeps me going is the impact we have on all or our stakeholders. These include our customers, delivery agents, staff, partners, and investors. When I think about the people whose jobs and livelihoods are dependent on our success, it gives me hope and belief in our company. 

What do you like most about your customers and partners, and the businesses they run?

I like their honesty; sharing core business information about their businesses is a massive jump for them, but they are willing to do this to grow their businesses. 

These entrepreneurs have a culture created around their businesses that determines their sustainability and growth. Some may not know the technical aspects, but the effort toward long-term success is evident.

Could you share a great customer/distributor moment with us?

A distributor by the name Jesus Cares 23 (JC23) from the Eastern Region of Ghana initially did not have any technology, system, or database of their inventory and customers. They only had a spreadsheet to track expenses and the amount of money they made. 

After showing interest in our solution, they were very cautious while trying to confirm our legitimacy as a company to ensure that their information was in good hands. 

After establishing trust, we were able to set them up on our platform and they could instantly see how much easier it was to manage their inventory, orders, and customers. What gives me joy is now seeing JC23 actively marketing Boost to others.

What is your five or ten-year vision for Boost Ghana?

I would like for us to be the go-to tech solution for distributors and retailers across Ghana,  bringing them into the digital economy and helping them to improve and grow their businesses.

“Ever since I was a kid, growing up in Soweto, I knew I wanted more than what I could see and I believed in myself. When I resigned from my corporate job in 2018, at the top of my career, it was the scariest thing I could have done. I jumped into a world of the unknown, the uncertain and with no guarantees, in pursuit of the better world I believed in. I've done many businesses since then, with my husband, and lost so much. But in the process, I learnt a lot and this has made me the woman, and business woman that I am today.” - Busisiwe Nkosi, owner iShipa Lam’ 

During South Africa’s COVID lockdowns, Busi Nkosi and her husband observed two conquering problems in their township community: 1) malls were flooded with people because online grocery ordering was unfamiliar and untrusted; and 2) unemployment was rising as businesses were shutting down. 

To address these challenges, Busi and her husband launched iShipa Lam’ in May 2021  with a mission to make life easier for South African households to buy their groceries. The business operates a sales agent model recruiting and supporting entrepreneurs to run their own micro-businesses selling high-quality meat to households. Agents are responsible for recruiting and serving their own customers, while iShipa Lam’ handles order fulfilment and provides each of them with  an online shop and marketing materials. .

Boost is a proud partner to Busi and the iShipa Lam’ network of entrepreneurs. We provide them with access to high-quality stock, seamless digital ordering and convenient delivery services. 

Today iShipa Lam’ has grown to include five full-time staff supporting 18 agent entrepreneurs. Together, they serve township communities and suburbs around Johannesburg including Soweto, Roodepoort and Southgate.

Busi’s drive comes from her desire to provide her two beautiful girls the kind of life that she only dreamed of. Her goal is to make iShipa Lam’ a household name across all of South Africa.  

The Growing Businesses Foundation (GBF) has tirelessly worked for 22 years to support entrepreneurship amongst the most underserved people in Nigeria. They have touched projects ranging from rural telecommunications, microcredit and the distribution of essential goods to peri-urban and rural communities. 

In 2014, Shakti Nigeria (Gbemiga) was launched as a collaboration between Unilever and GBF. Starting with a 100 woman pilot in Ibadan, GBF aimed to replicate the success of Unilever’s original Shakti programme in India. Back in 2014, Nigeria’s mobile broadband penetration stood at 10%, one-fifth of what it is today. GBF and Unilever built Nigeria’s Shakti network offline and from the ground up, without the help of social network platforms or mobile apps.

Through tenacious iteration, GBF has developed a robust and replicable programme to transform disadvantaged rural women into thriving convenience entrepreneurs. By providing training, start-up financing, on-going support and supplier relationships, GBF has helped many women graduate from selling door-to-door to become owner-operators of brick and mortar provision stores.  

Since its launch, the Shakti programme has grown into a 5,000 woman strong network of retailers across 17 states. In 2020, Shakti entrepreneurs contributed 5% of Unilever Nigeria’s turnover ($10M). 

Increasing smartphone penetration provides an opportunity to broaden GBF’s impact and ensure the Shakti entrepreneur network continues to thrive. Boost is thrilled to work alongside GBF to digitise stock ordering and fulfilment, and power the growth of the network to 25,000 women across Nigeria by 2025.