BusinessDay’s Top 25 Most Innovative Companies in Nigeria holds today  

 Tonight, BusinessDay will hold the maiden edition of the Top 25 Most Innovative Companies & Institutions in Nigeria Awards, which recognises and honours the Organisations that have developed the most inventive and ground-breaking products, ideas and services in 2016. Air France-KLM, one of the largest airlines in the world, is head-line sponsor for the event.

Anchored by its research arm, BusinessDay Research and Intelligence Unit (BRIU), the Awards was conceptualised to celebrate the achievements of those who are spurring growth, development, creating new economic opportunities for citizens and communities and inspiring the new generation of innovators in shaping Africa’s future.

Nigeria’s economy plunged into a recession in 2016, a situation that has challenged the operational existence of many of Nigeria’s big and small companies across all sectors. But in every challenge, there is an opportunity. Faced with declining demand, policy inconsistency and uncertainty, acute scarcity of foreign exchange, and dwindling revenues, players in both the private and public sector have had to dig deep into their innovative capacity to do extra-ordinary things in 2016.

According to the Economist “Innovation in Africa is helped by a peculiar confluence of economic and political circumstances.” The World Economic Forum elaborated further in its article published in January 2016 titled: “Is Africa leading the Innovation Revolution?” that “Necessity is the mother of invention, and in Africa it has been the mother of innovation.”

Indeed, Africa’s peculiar set of problems has necessitated that innovation becomes a key ingredient for Companies and Individuals to thrive. Largely fuelled by the equalising nature of technology and mobile telephony, Nigeria is slowly but surely emerging as a force to be reckoned with. This was consolidated by the visit of Mark Zuckerberg, the fifth richest man in the world, to Yaba in Lagos, Nigeria. Yaba is popularly called the Silicon Valley of Nigeria. It has become the central hub for the technological innovation revolution in Nigeria.

Subsequently, Andela, one of the nominees for BusinessDay’s Top 25 Most Innovative Companies tonight, made history as the first Organisation to receive $24 million Series B round of funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a fund set up by the Facebook founder and his wife, alongside existing investors Spark Capital, Omidyar Network, Learn Capital and CRE Ventures. Andela was founded in May 2014 by a team of entrepreneurs from Nigeria, Cameroun, the United States and Canada.

Technology has further deepened the advancement of Nigeria as a frontier market when it comes to innovation. Furthermore, technology is also helping to transform business models, especially across all sectors of the economy.

For instance, in the area of banking, technology is revolutionising the market space. For instance, in the media industry, Iroko TV’s web platform that provides paid-for Nigerian films on-demand is the world’s largest platform for Nollywood movies and TV series.

Nominees in the banking category are spearheading their Company’s growth and improving bottom-line through technology. Take for instance, Access Bank’s PayWithCapture 5.0, which has been described as a bank in its own based on the product’s features. GTBank’s *737* Code is a mobile channel, which enables the bank’s customers to conveniently perform third party transfers to both GTBank and other bank account holders in Nigeria via mobile phones.

Most notable in the innovation emerging in Nigeria’s banking sector is the digitalisation of banking and the growth of the fintech segment. Two nominees of BusinessDay’s Innovation Awards in the Banking category are Lidya and SunTrust Bank. Lidya’s digital platform uses over 100 different data points to help any SME access much-needed working capital and build a customised credit score. SunTrust Bank relies on digital channels – online, mobile and telephone – to deliver its products and services.

In the area of E-Payments, Interswitch’s Verve Paycode allows people to make withdrawals across bank ATMs without having to use a physical card, while also allowing users to make payments at points of purchase (POS) even without cards, by simply generating a 4-digit PAYCODE from our Verve World App.

The benefits of innovating successfully could lead to cost reductions, growth in revenues and increase in the bottom-line. Most importantly, the ability to exploit and tap into unexplored markets is key. The capacity to develop new and unexplored solutions to prevalent and existing problems is a major underlying foundation for any innovative venture.

For instance, one of the recent cutting-edge projects in innovation is Lafarge’s Biomass Alternative Fuel Feeding System. The project is focused on developing an alternative fuel (primarily biomass) supply and utilisation system to partly substitute the use of fossil fuels at Lafarge’s Ewekoro and Sagamu plant facilities.

The Dangote Sub-sea gas project and the world class 650,000 barrels per day Refinery and Petrochemicals is the Largest Single Train Petroleum Refinery in the World. The $3 billion Sub-sea Pipeline Infrastructure dubbed East West Offshore Gas Gathering System (EWOGGS) is the largest in any Country in the World. Once complete, the project will transform the Oil & gas value chain with respect to the refining and petroleum downstream sector. The benefits cannot be overemphasised, in terms of its impact on every sector of the Economy.

Another nominee, Coca Cola pioneered the first bottles-to-fibre recycling operation in Nigeria. The synthetic fibre produced is valuable raw material that supports various local industries in producing textiles, mattresses, pillows, sofas, roofing sheets and insulation for buildings.

Overall, the list of 125 nominees that made the list of innovators for BusinessDay’s Top 25 Most Innovative Awards emerged from different and diverse sectors of the Nigerian Economy. Innovation takes place in various forms; it can be to transform business models; disrupt existing markets or create new ones; develop a new set of products; revolutionise service facilitation and deployment, among others.

BusinessDay seeks to advance the philosophy and culture of innovation in our nation space; and to recognise the people and companies that are driving it. Today, innovation is a key driver of organic growth for all companies—regardless of sector or geography. Recognizing the Organisations, Agencies and Individuals that are driving and advancing the culture of innovation, the Award brings together industry leaders across all sectors.

Summarily, the Awards seek to showcase the Companies and Institutions that contributed immensely to the sustainability of their customer-base, bottom-line, overall organisational growth, as well as the socio-economic development of our country. Subsequently in line with the Awards, BusinessDay will also be publishing the Innovation report: Companies to Inspire Nigeria in 2017 highlighting the various nominees and the ground-breaking product, service or idea for which they were selected and short-listed.

For the different award categories, the Award Committee employed various parameters and criteria in the process of selecting and short-listing the nominees out of hundreds of thousands of organisations, institutions and businesses registered and operating in Nigeria. Subsequently, some of the trailblazing Companies that made the list in the different categories include MTN Nigeria, Ogun State Property & Investment Corporation (OPIC), Chivita Nigeria, Leadway Assurance,  among others.

Other trailblazers that made the list of nominees include: Grenadines Homes with the Co-Ownership Investment Scheme and the Timeshare Ownership Scheme, which allows real estate investors of different cadres to own a property in the highly rated locations of Lagos, especially at the iconic Atlantic Resort, a waterfront location, situated on the Water Corporation Drive, Victoria Island.

AJEAST’s visionary stride in pioneering the 65cl Big Cola brand and its variants (Cola, Lemon and Orange) thus disrupting the carbonated beverages market in Nigeria with the new bottle size; provides ground-breaking innovation that has resulted, in no small measure, to making commercial and socio-economic impact, as well as value creation for the country.

JAWA is the innovator and pioneer in the Antibiotic Dry Syrup Formulations (JAWACLOX and JAWAMOX) – the only Dry Syrup with purified water. This makes the products unique in Nigeria market as other competing brands of Antibiotic are not packed with PURIFIED WATER. They are the first and only company.