• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Amusan: Entrepreneur using tech to support Africa’s migrants

Amusan: Entrepreneur using tech to support Africa’s migrants

Abimbola Amusan, the co-founder of Vesti Technologies Inc – a business disrupting migrant financing and migration banking, is on a mission to enhance the financial inclusion of Africa’s migrants.

Amusan’s belief in the power of technology as it fosters and accelerates human activities. He adds that his love for tech fuelled his incursion to the space.

The young entrepreneur and his co-founder were inspired to create solutions that make a considerable impact, noting that leadership and entrepreneurship are all about making impacts.

“Lots of traditional processes can now be automated, ensuring unparalleled efficiency and enormous scale. That realization spurred me to action and birthed the company I currently run with my co-founder,” he says.

“Migration is at the center of going global because people do not only want to do business with others from other parts of the world; they also want to live in places other than where they were born. That’s what inspired Vesti,” he explains.

“The Vesti app is an easy-to-navigate platform that shows users how to migrate most seamlessly. Guiding them step-by-step along the way,” he adds.

Vesti app, co-founded by the duo of Abimbola and Olusola, is a financial solution that provides peer-to-peer payments and migration-related fees settlement for Africans and gives a support structure for immigrants in accessing investment opportunities.

Also, for migrants seeking opportunities to move to Europe and North America for work and study, the Vesti app allows them to receive money, transfer money, and make international payments using the app.

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Sharing a few of his life lessons in the last few years, he says, “I am still learning a lot as an entrepreneur, but in the few years that I have run businesses, I would say that I have learned that nothing good comes easy.”

“Every successful business is a product of pain, stress, sweat, and hard work. It’s easier to be an employee than an entrepreneur, especially in the early days of running a business,” he notes.

“I have also learned that with dedication and resilience, entrepreneurship pays off,” he stresses.

On some of the challenges he experienced on his early entrepreneurship journey, Amusan explains that transitioning from a conventional entrepreneur to a technopreneur was the most challenging. “Learning the ropes of how the technology industry and its players work, and a lot of its dynamics were a learning curve for me.”

On roles the government should play to drive entrepreneurship, the young entrepreneur urges the government to create an enabling environment for businesses to thrive.

“Without an enabling environment, businesses will struggle to survive. Beyond this, there should be initiatives that support businesses, and cause them to grow fast.”

Also, he calls on the Nigerian government to provide credit facilities and tax breaks to start-ups and businesses to enable them to survive and scale.

On his advice to other young entrepreneurs, he says, “Resilience is the word. Without it, no business will survive. There’s always light at the end of the tunnel. It’s also advisable to find ways to diversify,”

“This may be by finding customers that operate in other economies or building a product that can attract foreign patronage. I guess this will be very helpful to any business,” he advised.