Software Development
Published Feb 14, 2022
The fintech bug finally caught you and now you are thinking about floating your own savings app similar to that of Piggyvest or CowryWise? What exactly was it? The multiples of eight-figure valuations and revenues? Well, here is some great news for you. With estimates in revenue projected to reach $543 million by 2022, you can snatch a piece of the action for yourself. For you to get started, there are some things you would need to know:
Every business person knows that right from the point where the idea still lives on paper, clearly defining what your USP and who your target audience is will give direction and position you for a chance at success. Piggyvest and CowryWise are top contenders in the financial savings space with 3,000,000 users and 220,000 users respectively. Piggyvest boasts an amazing 10 – 13% interest per annum on savings, which is quite impressive considering that the most promising Nigerian mutual funds peaked at 9.58%. CowryWise on the other hand offers a variety of interesting offers. With all of this in mind, what gaps do you think you spot and can fill? What do you think your audience would want you to deliver to them?
Something you would always want to keep in mind is to keep it simple. Start with an initial product offering. Piggyvest started with a simple idea. Which was to create a digitized way to help people save money daily, weekly and monthly. CowryWise had a slightly different approach. While it sought to serve its target audience with financial savings service, its focus was geared towards wealth management for the vast majority of the Nigerian working population that did not fall into the 1% top earners. Yes, you want people to save money using your services, get that particular service in their faces while pitching your USP. This approach will save you so much time, effort, and money. You do not want to build what you think is an amazing product only to find out that the market has no use for your service. You also get to interact with your early adopters, to understand their pain points better. Heck, this might even open new doors to opportunities you did not envisage. These opportunities help make your objectives clearer or even change the course of direction for the best.
You can approach this from two perspectives. If you already possess tech skills, you should already have an understanding of the tools required to build your savings app. Piggyvest uses a range of services for UX designing, backend framework, hosting, and payment integration. All of these can seem overwhelming at first but as stated previously, keep it simple and focus on delivering your MVP. It will help to note that building a web-based service will do just fine. This will keep your cost significantly low, help with gaining customer traction while you slowly transition to building a standalone app. If you happen to not be tech-inclined, you will still be fine as long as you possess people management skills. This skill will serve your best when choosing tech partners to build and manage the technical aspects of the business. One sure hack is to have a co-founder who serves as a CTO or COO while you focus on the non-technical aspects of the business. Somto Ifezue for PiggyVest and Razak Ahmed for CowryWise present ideal cases for Tech and non-tech founders respectively.
The success or failure of your planned savings app will rely heavily on the marketing plan and structure you are willing to put in place. As earlier stated, testing out your USP and offer will determine whether or not your savings platform will be commercially viable. This can be done through different methods(https://fuelcycle.com/blog/market-testing/). After you have found a working formula, your next goal will be to get more of it across to your broader audience. PiggyVest and CowryWise chose organic marketing at their inception through the use of word of mouth and referral bonuses before adopting the aggressive marketing strategies they currently use. You can choose to go the same route. Start with word of mouth, which is dependent on having a viable product before pushing funds into heavy media campaigns.
Do you want to be successful in your new venture? You should understand your numbers. These numbers keep you on track while aiming for your goals. But do you know what is even better? These numbers help position you as a serious business that may one day attract the interest of investors. PiggyVest has some interesting numbers that you could check out (https://craft.co/piggyvest). You can also check out(https://craft.co/cowrywise) those for CowryWise. Remember, if you can measure it, you can scale it.
The Nigerian business landscape posits a bitter-sweet experience for industry players regardless of what sector of the economy one chooses to play in. But while the landscape can be difficult, it is not insurmountable. As with all legal businesses in Nigeria, you will do well to obtain business registration from the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). But that is only a small part of the regulatory hurdles you will need to scale as a business and more importantly as a fintech organization. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is the top regulatory body of the fintech space, other regulatory bodies include; the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC). There are several acts, rules, and regulations governing the fintech space, much of which you would want to get such resources at your disposal. This also implies that you engage a solid legal team or personnel to help with navigating the waters and keeping clampdowns are a minimum.
Software development
Software development
Software development