Olokesusi: FG Should Support Female-owned Businesses

Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of transport-driven startup, Shuttlers, Damilola Olokesusi, talks about Women in technology, ways technology can enhance the transportation sector, among other issues. Nosa Alekhuogie presents the excerpts:

Why could be responsible for women’s low participation in technology, and what should the federal government do to bridge the gap?

Right now, most of the problems that I see are cultural. For example, I studied chemical engineering and there was a handful of female colleagues in my class as at then. So I think it’s more of cultural factors that inhibits women.

There is a cultural part to why there are few technology entrepreneurs or founders and that’s because there is a belief that women are not meant to be working, or doing strenuous jobs. There is already this notion that there are some roles or career lines that are particularly for men or women but that’s changing and we have seen a rise in the exposure and education, and people are beginning to see that it’s not a gender fixed industry where the male dominates.

Also, there is an education part of it as well. To be a technical co- founder, you need a little bit of background, you don’t need to be a developer or engineer but being in a particular career line that might make it easier to be a tech founder.

Right from school, you hardly see females participating in engineering or being a developer, so there’s a huge gap in that space. Those are the two things that come to mind, the cultural aspect and the pipeline skill gap for women tech founders.

Talking about what the government can do to address the issue, I think government should make good policies and also make the business environment easier for people to do business.  But it’s really our responsibility as women to take what’s right for our society.

The federal government can also sensitise female owned businesses and to be honest, I don’t think about what the federal government can do for me, I rather think about what I can do for the government. What I’ll rather speak on is what women can do to participate more in whatever industry they find themselves in, like agriculture, fintech or fashion, they can use technology to make it more efficient. The introduction of technology is just to make something more efficient, faster and being able to cater to multiples of customers at the same time, that’s what technology does, it enables and scales solutions. So in whatever sector we find ourselves as women, we can use technology as an enabler. Women should be more open to technology and try to change their mindset towards being open to adopting technology, and see how they can also be players in this industry.

We need more female founders in technology that can pick challenges around us that’s peculiar to women that can use technology to solve them so that we can even help the government make sure this country is a better place. The government should do the right things, by supporting female-owned businesses and if they can just give us the basic amenities like light, good roads, then we are good.  Government should not make life difficult for female entrepreneurs.

There are already a number of female entrepreneurs that are in Nigeria who need to come into the tech space and become players as well.

How do you think the transportation sector can be enhanced with technology?

There are so many ways and so many problems that the government is still trying to identify and solve,  from technology stand point, using data to drive decisions that can help people understand what to do during traffic. Such can prevent traffic congestion and also remove the burden of parking space. The technology that can help government identify how to identify bad roads so that they can know when to fix them, is what we need. Maybe things that can also enhance security on the roads, because so many challenges are still there. We are just focused on the customers’ side and how we can help people find something that is comfortable yet affordable. We are focusing on mass transit and that is why we don’t do 

cars.

There are also other modes of transportation as well, that we are looking to enter into. There is rail, there is ferry and the other ones that are currently not in the country that people can  use as an enabler and technology can leverage on those systems. 

Technology on its own might not be able to solve the transport challenges because it has to work with a system to make it work.

Has the government reached out in anyway to partner with you on this platform or contribute in some ways?

The Ogun State government has reached out to us so far, and the government is trying to introduce Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in Ogun State. For the current Lagos State government, we have reached out to Lagos Bus Services Limited (LBSL), as well as bus service, and we have been in talks with them for a while now to see how we can also help to make that possible because we run a scale up system, which we currently do not do. It helps to know when your buses are driving. You can track your bus and all of those things that happen abroad. They have plans to also implement some of these things that we are also proposing but we are still talking with them to see how we can work together. Yes, we have gotten some calls from some other state governments.

What has been Shuttlers greatest challenge so far in the transportation sector and how have you been able to cope with the levies being imposed by different transportation bodies like the National Union for Road Transport Workers (NURTW)? 

At every stage in life, there are new challenges. At the early stage, it was people trusting us to be able to pull it off and access to finance. At a particular stage, access to finance was was no longer our challenge, it now became how to find talented team members that can join us to ensure we achieve our goals and after that, it might be government policies or something else entirely.

There’s not a particular thing to pick as the greatest challenge but one thing all this does for us is that once we are able to conquer and overcome one challenge, it’s gives us more strength and boosts our morale to understand that there’s nothing we cannot overcome.

Concerning the imposition of these ‘agbero’ levies, even before shuttlers came into the scene, there was a staff bus industry but then, it was only big companies that could access the bus like the Oil and Gas companies or FMCGs, but right now what shuttlers is offering is an easy access, because your company does not need to have a staff bus. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that has only five staff does not need to buy a bus, they can just pay for the seat on our platform and  access the staff bus for their staff or you can pay just 50 per cent for your staff and they are able to access the service. 

So what we have done is to break the barrier to entry so that it is not only big companies or elites that can access this staff bus system. Based on  that, there is already a staff bus industry where there is a distinction between staff bus and ‘Danfo’ buses where they already pay their local government fees, licenses. There is a number of licenses that are required for them to pay to the Ministry of Transportation and we have paid that already and we are compliant but as we expand, we are moving into communities, we are moving into public transportation, and we don’t own buses, we are just enablers . We are bringing comfortable and efficient buses, putting them on our platform and giving access to customers on our platform but as we expand and grow bigger, we would also want to aggregate public buses and maybe now we would enter the ‘Agbero’ industry. By that time, we would be able to also structure and understand how their levies are being paid but right now, there is a distinction between the staff bus and the yellow ‘Danfo’ buses but in the future, when we are in the ‘Danfo’ system, we would be open to discussion with them on how it is run.

Shuttlers is for companies and individuals. We have B2B customers,B2C customers and B2B2C customers

You raised about $1.6m in seed funding in November, can you tell us how much has been invested in Shuttlers so far?

Before the $1.6 million, we already got about $110,000 in grant and personal funding before we go the external sum of $1.6 million. So in total we have about $1.7 million since inception.

Also, before we also announced our numbers, we made sure that we did our homework well to ensure that we are aligned, we had necessary licenses and we are compliant with all the fees to be paid. So, I am not the only one that has raised money, a lot of companies nowadays have raised money as well. So we don’t have any challenge with the government.

Are you in partnership with anybody, agency or brands at the moment?

I used to have two co-founders but they left. It has been a tough journey. 

We piloted the business in November 2015 but our official launch was in October 2016. For now it’s not just me, we have other team members. I see everyone as being on a partnership with me on this journey.

What advice will you give to women that want to come into the Fintech space?

I would say that they should not be afraid of challenges, new things and should be open minded. It starts with the mindset and understanding that there is nothing like this industry is for males. I didn’t enter this industry thinking that it is a male dominated industry. It was while I was in it that I actually realised that there are more males in this industry than women. The first thing is the mindset, understanding that there are no barriers for any industry. Nothing is for women, nothing is for men, understand that you have the ability and capacity to do it, is what really matters. People out there don’t have two heads, they are not smarter, it is just that they are willing to take more risk. In your mind, if you know that you can deal with challenges, then the rest is just simple.