Heirs Technologies, a subsidiary of the Tony Elumelu majority-owned holding company, wants to become like Tek Experts which outsources IT support for businesses whose cores are not tech-oriented but need tech for their operations.
It intends to offer this service through the Managed IT Services segment of its business, which will aim to offer infrastructure management services, IT monitoring, software update and patch management, cybersecurity, cloud services management and monitoring, network management, data analytics, backup and disaster recovery.
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Obong Idiong, the company’s managing director and chief executive officer at Heirs Technologies, outlined the plan to journalists: “… to provide businesses with a seamless and secured IT environment, allowing them to concentrate on their core operations while the technology aspect is expertly handled.”
The company said it will model its business after the success of India, Eastern Europe, and a couple of other local companies that have made progress in outsourcing talents for companies. Heirs is banking on the country’s youth population and growing developer population, which rose by 45 percent in 2023, to help create a sustainable pipeline of available tech talents.
It is currently investing in training 75 to 100 talents in 2024. The CEO highlighted that the new tech company will also build “campuses across the country to support outsourcing initiatives on the continent” to grow its pipeline.
Heirs’ play for the outsourcing market aligns with the Federal Government’s move to tap the said market, estimated to be worth $250 billion globally. The Outsource to Nigeria Initiative, a private sector-led, government-enabled program led by the Office of the Vice President, aims to create jobs in the business process and technology-enabled outsourcing sector.
Also, Bosun Tijani, the minister of communications, innovation, and digital economy, recently revealed plans to train three million technical talents over the next four years. 1.5 million of these talents will be outsourced to the global economy.
“Ultimately, our strategic intent is to retain at least 1.5 million of these skilled professionals within our local talent pool and facilitate opportunities for another 1.5 million of our talented individuals to excel in the global talent marketplace, preferably through remote opportunities,” Tijani said in a policy statement.
Nigeria wants to become an outsourcing hub in the coming years, and Anant Rao, executive director of Heirs Technologies, believes that these government initiatives will help private sector effort in the space too.
Speaking on the Heirs direction, Rao said, “We want to run IT as a business for our customers and make it very efficient. We want to make Nigeria a serious outsourcing hub. That is where we want to play.”
Some companies, like Tek Experts, already operate in the country’s tech outsourcing space. “We will compete with the big boys. What they have, we have. We want to create an integrated structure. We want to play,” Rao said, acknowledging established players in the space.
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Fumbi Chima, chairman of its Board of Directors, stressed that Heirs Technologies, which was incorporated in 2004 but started operating in January 2024, does not intend to compete in the product space but rather invest in technical support through an academy it wants to spread to university campuses soon.
Nigeria aspires to replicate India’s outsourcing success. In 2022, India’s IT and business process outsourcing industry generated $177 billion, and 59 percent of American countries outsourced to India, according to a survey by Deloitte.
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