Over the last two decades, Nigeria has seen significant growth in its mobile telecommunication industry. Currently, data is being viewed as the new oil on the African continent.
Owing to this prospect, Elo Umeh founded Terragon Group, a data analytics business based in Lagos that provides software services to meet clients’ marketing and analytics needs.
Having worked in the communication industry of different African countries including Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, and Cote d’Ivoire, Umeh was able to acquire a vast amount of experience across Africa’s mobile telecommunication industry.
With the experience acquired over the years and his love for digital life, the young entrepreneur was inspired to establish Terragon in 2009.
“The development of mobile communications was a real game-changer and from the beginning, it began to make a significant impact across the continent. I realised it was going to change everything,” Elo said in a Forbes interview.
“I saw the potential of reaching an untapped market. We seek to transform the way companies reached their customers across Africa in the early years, and more recently, as data capabilities grow globally,” he said.
“We have focused on innovating with data by paying attention to the local realities within African markets,” he noted.
He said since starting, the business has experienced unprecedented growth over the past years and there is more opportunities on the horizon following the launch of Adrenaline, the company’s proprietary platform.
Currently, Terragon operates beyond Nigeria and has operations in several African countries including Kenya, Ghana, and Cameroon.
To further expand its operations, Terragon acquired Bizense – a Singapore based mobile ad platform for telcos in 2018.
Elo said that the deal has been a long time coming and would strengthen the company’s tech offering to its clients during the announcement.
“Bizense is a perfect fit for us as we’ve had time to grow our partnership and ascertain compatibility. We are united by a common culture of innovating game-changing mobile solutions — this is the unique differentiator,” he explained.
With the acquisition, Terragon has grown its propriety marketing technology business beyond Africa to other prospective markets in Asia and Latin America.
Umeh did not disclose how much was involved in the acquisition deal.
In the same year, the business secured a $5million investment from venture capital firm, TLCom Capital.
In explaining how the business operates, the young entrepreneur said that Terragon- Adrenaline is helping to redefine the advertising landscape by plugging mobile operators in Africa into an existing web ecosystem, thereby targeting previously unidentified consumers and allowing for personalised ad serving and monetisation.
“Using a unique mix of web and non-web inventory (as well as data sources from both inventory) and delivered via a programmatic technology, the software enables advertisers to access a variety of channel options at scale,” he said
“Adrenaline boasts of unrivalled access to data on the continent and can reach targeted mobile audiences in Africa, as well as the 70 percent of consumers who are not connected to the internet,” he explained.
“The software leverages media that sits within the operator environment, generated by the 97 percent of mobile subscribers who are prepaid, and their interactions on their phones,” he added.
Currently, the company has over a hundred employees and directly connects to 150million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, he said.
