Online forms represent many things to many people, it could be an opportunity to get a job, admission into foreign universities, pay utility bills, or get a loan. However, for Nigerian-based online startup, FormPlus it is an opportunity for businesses to learn more about those they serve and be able to serve them better.
Founded by Busayo Longe and launched in 2014 at the Co-Creation Centre (CcHUB), FormPlus is a tech financial services firm that helps companies get to the real business of knowing the customer through collating data from online forms and using those data in a way that helps them improve their services.
Online forms may not look like a big business prospect for many people, but Longe sees the peak of Everest when he talks about his company.
Over breakfast at the Upbeat Centre in Lekki, the over 6th tall founder said FormPlus was an idea which he never knew was going to make money much less become a big business that could attract equity investors in the near future. The company ran its services free for about a year before Longe was forced to monetize the service.
“Every day we saw people coming to ask us for more; that meant more servers and more manpower, so we started thinking of monetizing,” he recalls. “It was in 2014 that we put a prize on it.”
That decision apparently paid off instantly. On the first day of becoming a paid service, the company earned revenue of $80.
“It was a huge validation for us because people did not know who we were, did not know what we’ve done and they did not know we were Nigerians. Most people still don’t know we are Nigerians because it doesn’t appear to be a service that Nigerians are offering,” he said.
Since it began offering its services, the company has integrated a lot of features to enable customers do more. One of the features allows companies receive signature from their customers. In other words, the companies can complete contracts online. It also has a feature that enables businesses receive payment using their PayPal, Stripe or Flutterwave. They can ask their clients to pay for anything including conferences, education etc.
Online form filling is a $3 billion industry and Longe believes that FormPlus has the potential to grow in markets like Nigeria. But there is still lack of understanding of the market despite the fact that nearly every Nigerian online have filled at least one form in his lifetime.
Longe says it all depends on how it is perceived. People paying for bills online are invariably filling a form.
“Your Facebook post is a form, someone has filled it somewhere and you are seeing what they filled on the form. Looking at it that way, forms are really in everything we do,” he says.
Although majority of FormPlus customers are outside Nigeria, one of the company’s biggest clients is the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC). Executive secretary Yewande Sadiku of the commission is on mission to engender accountability across the ministry departments. The implication of leveraging FormPlus platform is that anyone cannot throw in data from anywhere, there has to be a reference point for everything data. This is to enable seamless operations across the department and reduce human errors or discrepancies.
“Our biggest market is education, most of the foreign universities use FormPlus to register students and receive data from parents as well. Every year they have events that they need to structure and they do them on FormPlus. We have seen the average lifespan of a customer to be about 12 months. So when someone comes on FormPlus, they stay for about a year. Interestingly we have added a new model to FormPlus. We saw that forms were just one part of the flow of what people need to do. What happens is that you fill a form and someone will have to respond to that form, like a Leave Request form which you fill and it goes to HR. HR receives the form and either responds by approving or rejecting the request. That form then goes to Audit unit who verifies that everything is in place,” he says.
It takes less than 15 seconds to create a form on the platform, depending on the size of the project.
