Perez Tigidam: What will kill you does not look like you

by Perez Tigidam

A few weeks ago, I sat with my buddy Oluyomi Ojo E (Founder of Printivo) at TerraCulture, we had decided to meet up after work and just chat about business and what we’re both doing. We both have eyes on East Africa and possibly will join forces as Naija boys to invade the zone. He made a statement that threw us both into laughter. “Wetin go kill you no resemble you” this was in reference to the subject matter of competition.

Sometimes, we get fixated on our in-industry competition, people doing similar stuff with us that we forget what and where our real compitition is coming from. Let me put it in context with examples here; traditional media started gasping for breadth the very day Facebook stopped being a social network and became a media & content company.

The guys who own Hello food probably never would have seen Uber as a rival because Uber is into the business of transportation but today UBER has launched Uber Eat, it has been launched in South Africa and soon will be here and I don’t see how Hello food, rebranded to Jumia food will survive it, they probably might.

I was in Yaba on Saturday for a meeting and it was in Caffè Neo, in the 2hrs that I sat there, most of the tech guys in Lagos came in there to grab something to eat. Why is this unique? Prior to Caffè Neo opening in Yaba, there was a local food joint where all the techies usually hang out, if they had told them that Coffee will kill their Jollof rice business they won’t have believed it but the techies have moved on. Caffè Neo is offering them ambience + WiFi. So just imagine the bliss that would be if that local food joint decides to fight back, repackages and start doing advertising that promotes Jollof rice + free WiFi. Even our well known Jollof rice ambassador Victor Osaretin Asemota might be tempted to relocate back to Nigeria.

It might take a long while but I am deeply convinced that Fintech enabled startups will be the future of Banking and payments. Regulation or no regulation, let the traditional banks continue to sleep on a bike, the smarter they decide to become, the better for them. They can’t out-compete these startups when the time is ripe. They should rather find room for alignments.

If they dont, like Phyno rightly said in his song “Oga emegi vum N’anya”


Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Perez Tigidam is a brand strategy consultant and publisher. This article was first written HERE

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