A Nigeria based AI-powered tech startup, OkHi is making waves in Africa’s financial services market as they transform the lives of one billion people by providing them with a digital address that unlocks access to life's critical services. Timbo Drayson, OkHi’s founder and CEO, speaks to AfricArena’s Jabulile Sonya Ngwenya about what inspired him to launch the world’s next generation addressing system.
We live in an increasingly interconnected world, thanks to the internet and Google Maps, which helps us to seamlessly find our way through different terrains and territories. If you’ve used Google Maps and Chromecast, then you’ve come across Timbo Drayson’s work.
Before he founded OkHi, he worked at Google for several years as a product manager, putting his astute engineering skills to work, refining a geo spatial mapping technology that many people in Africa now use to navigate daily life.
Despite Google Map’s reach, Timbo shares that he had an eureka moment when he was busy launching Google Maps in a new territory. “When I launched Google Maps across the Middle East and Africa, I saw that billions of people could not be found on the map because they do not have a formal physical address. When I travelled around Africa on a sabbatical from Google I experienced the problem first hand and decided to quit Google to build a company that will put one billion people on the map.” This is how OkHi began, with Timbo and his co-founders, Navraj Ghataura, Chief Technology Officer; Evans Mutai, Head of Engineering and Henry Ingham, Head of Design who shared a vision and worked together to create an innovative solution to a problem many people living in Africa experience. There are some cities and regions where address verification can be a confusing, time-consuming process where people don’t even have clear, precise addresses, which in turn affects their ability to contribute and participate in Africa’s economy.
OkHi aims to change this with their dynamic address verification system. “OkHi is on a mission to put one billion people on the map. We sell digital address verification to banks so they know where their customers live,” Timbo says.
What drives Timbo and his team is knowing that there is a need, a demand within the market for their services as in many instances, it is lifesaving, and drives economic inclusion. Timbo shares two moments in his journey that were turning points for him, and pointed to a need within the market for OkHi’s innovative addressing solution, and both moments happened in Kenya which is home to one of Africa’s largest, most complex slums which can be a perplexing maze for people looking for someone’s address.
The first defining moment was when I asked for directions and the person told me, "Once you arrive in the village, turn left where the goats used to graze!” This moment made me laugh, but also realise there was an addressing problem, Timbo recounts. He shares the second defining moment was when “a Red Cross ambulance driver told me a few days earlier that she got so lost trying to find an address that when she arrived, it was too late and the person was dead.”
These two defining problems changed Timbo’s perspective and challenged him to think about what kind of solutions were needed to effectively solve these problems. “'I am passionate about what I do as I am a problem-solver by nature, so working on a problem that impacts billions of people and costs the global economy US$200 billion a year keeps me very motivated. I also feel very fortunate to work with an amazing team of similarly mission driven people who are as driven and mad as me to be solving this problem,” Timbo says. Passion, combined with tenacity, resilience and a growth mindset, as many startup founders know, is what moves the needle for them while building their businesses.
What makes OkHi’s success noteworthy, Timbo shares is their recent business achievement of impacting Nigeria’s financial inclusion policy as “digital address verification is now supported by the Central Bank of Nigeria for KYC processes.” Quite impressive for a startup that initially bootstrapped their business model with US$100,000 Timbo generated from selling Google stock options. Over the last 10 years, OkHi has raised US$7 million in capital.
Winning the AfricArena Best AI & Deep Tech Startup Award at the 2024 AfricArena Grand Summit event was an incredible experience, Timbo says. “Thank you for the opportunity and recognition. It was very rewarding for all of us to see Roger Norton, our Chief Product Officer, on stage. Winning the AI award was great validation of the deep tech AI product that we have built. The award has also helped increase the awareness of OkHi, our mission and our product.”
An article connected to MIT research on how India’s poor addressing data which cost India between US$10 - US$14 billion at the time the article was written, paints a picture of how OkHi is positively impacting people’s lives in Africa with its unique addressing verification system.
The largest amount of funds OkHi has raised to date is $US3 million in their Seed round and these funds were used to build and launch its digital verification product for financial services in Nigeria.
Timbo says going into 2025, “once we're live with the major banks and fintechs in Nigeria, we plan to raise a significant funding round to reach profitability in Nigeria and scale the business internationally.”
He shares that during the funding winter which impacted investors and startups alike, what OkHi did to cope with the pressures was that “We invested time on our financial processes to ensure that every dollar that we spent had a positive return on investment for the business. This was a very healthy exercise and something we're still benefitting from today.”
What keeps Timbo going each day is that he maximises and optimizes his time to ensure a seamless flow every day. “I'm an early riser so I will get up before sunrise, ideally do some exercise and a quick meditation. I will get any personal admin done first and then start my work day. I like to keep my morning meetings free to maximise maker time, then take a break over lunch before diving into afternoon meetings. I try to wrap up work by 6pm so that I can switch off, cook and be present with my wife.”
Reflecting on the biggest challenges he and his team has encountered in their industry, he mentions a few challenges. “One continual challenge is the hiring and retaining of talent, especially technical talent when we're competing with large international big tech companies. We are very intentional with our hiring to find mission driven people who also align with our values and we invest in a share option plan to align everyone's incentives.”
He adds that he and his team are also keenly aware that they are pioneering new ground. “We're building a new category of business that doesn't exist anywhere in the world, which is challenging because there are no direct reference points to learn from. We try to overcome this by listening to our customers, building a product they really want and providing a great customer experience.”
Looking to the future, Timbo shares that one of the best pieces of advice a mentor gave him was this: “Don't only focus on the end goal, it's important to enjoy the journey getting there too. We built one of our company values around this and it's something I try to practice every day.”
He adds that as a founder, visionary and leader, it is important “to enjoy the present! Beyond that it's all about building towards our mission to get one billion people on the map; each and every new person we put on the map is impactful and a meaningful achievement.”
Timbo ends the interview with some well gleaned words of wisdom to founders who want to build a tech startup in similar industries: “Ultimately as founder you need to be very clear why you are planning to build a startup business. This self-awareness is critically important, especially when the going gets tough, so I urge every founder to find it and pull from it when needed.” Wise words spoken indeed, for every founder needs to understand their why and show up for themselves in all seasons of building and growing their businesses and leading their teams.
For more information about AfricArena and our upcoming events, visit our website at www.africarena.com
Comments