MD, RedStar. Mr. Sule Bichi or bad road
By Emma Okonji
Owing to the importance of courier operations in driving e-Commerce in the country, RedStar Express has called on government to construct new roads and maintain existing ones, to enhance their businesses.
The courier company made the call in Lagos, when its management team, led by its Managing Director, Mr. Sule Bichi, paid a courtesy visit to THISDAY in Lagos.
According to Bichi, courier operators needed good roads, good railway system, and good air transportation system for better, timely distribution and delivery of goods and services. Lamenting the deplorable state of roads and railway systems in the country, Bichi said bad roads limit delivery time of goods from one part of the country to another.
Not troubled by the new Lagos State transportation law, which prohibits the movement of trucks during the day, Bichi said the law would not affect their business, since the law was meant to protect the people of Lagos State.
RedStar Express, he said, had since repositioned its logistics business and expanded its scope of business by introducing more subsidiaries like the RedStar Freight, RedStar Support Service, RedStar Logistics, designed to address different market segments within the courier industry.
Speaking on the evolution of eCommerce in Nigeria, Executive Director, RedStar Express, Mr. Muyiwa Olumekun said “eCommerce is gaining grounds in Nigeria, with lots of businesses going online, and RedStar is fully involved in delivery services in the most professional manner, covering every part of Nigeria, including the rural and urban sectors.”
Redstar is celebrating 20 years of operation as a courier company with a vision to surpass its N6 billion yearly turnover to N16 billion by the year 2015, Olumekun said. He added that the deployment of new technologies in driving its’ business, will help achieve the 2015 vision.
“Our technology deployment allows customers to trace and track their goods from any location, thus creating peace of mind for our customers.”
According to him, despite the insecurity situation in the country, RedStar remained committed to its business of delivering goods and services to every nook and cranny of the country.
“We are innovative in our approach and what we did was to employ people and encourage them to work in their localities, where they are known and will not be attacked by their own people. This method has sustained us to a large extent, and we are still in business in spite of the insecurity situation in most parts of the country where we do business,” Olumekun said.
Bichi listed some of the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes to include scholarship awards to secondary school students, and presentation of gift items to ‘old people homes’ and ‘motherless baby homes’ as a way of giving back to the society where its courier businesses are carried out.