Inside Ocean Trends Digital: How Damilare Ajiboye built five live products, processed over N550 million, and never raised a naira

The UK-based Nigerian founder talks bootstrapping, building financial infrastructure from scratch, and why he thinks African tech has a revenue problem.

Damilare Ajiboye is the kind of founder who still writes code. As the Founder and CEO of Ocean Trends Digital Limited, he has designed, built, and shipped five live technology products across fintech, social commerce, education, healthcare, and utility management. His flagship platform, EarnIT, has processed over N550 million in transaction volume, serves more than 65,000 users, and generates real, recurring revenue. He did all of this without raising external funding.

Now based in Stoke-on-Trent in the United Kingdom, Ajiboye is currently completing a BSc in Computer Science at the University of Wolverhampton while simultaneously running Ocean Trends Digital. He also holds a BSc in Accounting from the National Open University of Nigeria. He has been coding since 2011, founded Ocean Trends Digital in 2017, and leads a team of approximately 40 people across in-house and remote capacities. He was recently named Tech Entrepreneur of the Year at the Global Visionary Leadership Summit in Abuja, recognised among Africa’s Under 40 CEOs at the 2025 summit in Johannesburg, and listed among the Top 20 Nigerian Techies of 2025 by Leadership newspaper.

In this conversation, he talks about what it takes to build financial infrastructure from scratch, why he refuses to chase venture capital, and what he believes the African tech ecosystem gets wrong about growth.

You are a CEO who still writes core infrastructure code. How does that work in practice?

It works because I built it that way deliberately. I am not a CEO who hired engineers and stepped back. I designed the wallet infrastructure, the payment reconciliation engine, the payout automation, the KYC pipeline, and the fraud monitoring layer for EarnIT myself. I wrote the foundational code, built the data models, and structured the transaction logic before bringing in engineers to extend and maintain those systems.

I stay involved at the architecture level because the quality of the core systems determines everything else. If the foundation is weak, no amount of frontend polish or marketing spend will save you. My accounting background also helps here. I think about money flows, reconciliation, and financial integrity the way a banker would, not just the way an engineer would. That shapes how I design every system that touches money.

EarnIT has some striking numbers. Walk us through what the platform actually does and where it stands today.

EarnIT sits at the intersection of social commerce and fintech. Users earn through structured digital tasks, social engagement, and referral programmes. They then spend those earnings within an integrated financial layer that handles wallets, payouts, bill payments (electricity, airtime, cable, data), and peer-to-peer transfers. The entire cycle happens inside one platform: earn, save, spend.

As of our most recent figures, the platform has over 65,000 registered users, approximately 23,000 monthly active users, and over 16,000 paying users in any given 30-day period. That paying user conversion rate against the active base is well above 60%, which is a number most consumer platforms never reach, including many that have raised significant venture funding. Total transaction volume has exceeded N550 million. Total revenue stands at over N38 million, with approximately N22 million of that generated in the last twelve months, so the trajectory is clearly accelerating. We maintain 99.9% uptime, a transaction success rate above 98%, and KYC compliance above 95% across the user base. We have also distributed over N20 million in rewards back to our user community.

None of this was funded externally. Every naira of growth came from revenue the platform generated itself.

You have four other live products beyond EarnIT. Why build across so many sectors instead of going deep on one?

People ask me this often, and I understand the logic behind the question. The conventional wisdom says focus on one thing. But what I am actually doing is repeating the same engineering pattern across different domains. Every product follows the same playbook: identify a specific operational pain point, understand the domain deeply before writing any code, architect a system that can run for a decade, monetise from day one, and scale through product quality rather than paid acquisition.

Bimzukash is a loan management system handling credit scoring, disbursement tracking, repayment automation, and default management. AlheriCare is a care coordination platform built for the US market, connecting agencies, care workers, families, and case managers. ElyonEdu supports international students with school selection, application tracking, documentation, visa monitoring, and AI-driven eligibility insights. BimzuWater is an enterprise utility management system for water production and distribution companies, with billing automation, inventory tracking, and operational reporting.

The breadth is not a lack of focus. It is proof of a repeatable engineering methodology. Each product required me to learn a new domain, understand its regulatory environment, and build infrastructure that meets its specific demands. That versatility is the point.

You have never raised external funding. Is that a principle or a circumstance?

It started as circumstance and became a principle. Early on, I simply did not have access to the networks that get you into VC conversations. So I built products that had to make money immediately, because there was no safety net. That constraint turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to Ocean Trends Digital.

When you have no funding, you cannot afford to build a product that does not generate revenue. You cannot hire ahead of demand. You cannot subsidise user acquisition. Every feature you build has to earn its place. That discipline is now embedded in how the entire company operates.

I am not opposed to raising capital. But the best time to raise money is when you do not need it. EarnIT was built to be fundable on its own terms, with real metrics, real revenue, and real infrastructure. If and when we raise, it will be a strategic choice to accelerate something that is already working, not a lifeline to keep the lights on.

You have said before that African tech has a “revenue problem.” What do you mean by that?

Open any African tech publication on any given day and count the headlines. Funding rounds, acquisitions, valuations. The language of African tech has become the language of venture capital. And somewhere along the way, we stopped asking the most basic question: is this company actually making money?

A significant number of startups that report impressive growth are not generating sustainable revenue. They report GMV as though it were income. They count promotional credits as transaction volume. They present user registrations as market penetration. The numbers look great on a pitch deck. They look far less impressive on a profit and loss statement.

I have watched the cycle play out repeatedly. Startups raise, hire aggressively, scale prematurely, struggle to monetise, and quietly wind down. The ecosystem moves on to the next shiny announcement. That pattern is not just wasteful. It is corrosive. It trains founders to believe that the path to building a technology company begins and ends with a pitch to investors. It does not.

You are currently completing a Computer Science degree at the University of Wolverhampton while running a multi-product company. How do you manage that?

It is honestly one of the hardest things I have taken on. Running Ocean Trends Digital, managing a team of around 40 people, shipping products, handling customers, and studying simultaneously requires a level of discipline that I did not know I had until I was forced to find it.

But the degree is important to me. I want the formal foundation in computer science to complement the practical experience I have built over the years. The two disciplines actually reinforce each other. The theoretical knowledge deepens my engineering practice, and the real-world building experience makes the academic work more intuitive. It is demanding, but it is making me a better engineer and a better founder.

You recently relocated to the UK. What is the plan for Ocean Trends Digital here?

The UK is where I want to take Ocean Trends Digital to its next stage. The fintech ecosystem here is one of the most developed in the world, and there is genuine demand for engineers and founders who can build secure, scalable payment infrastructure. I have already done that. The wallet systems, reconciliation engines, and payout architecture I built for EarnIT are designed to standards that align with what UK-regulated fintech requires.

Beyond fintech, our education platform is relevant to the UK’s international student market, which is one of the largest globally. Our care coordination platform has direct applicability to the UK’s social care sector, which faces significant digitisation challenges. And our utility management system demonstrates capacity to serve regulated industries that exist across the UK economy.

The plan is to build partnerships with UK-based organisations, expand the team here, and contribute to the broader UK technology ecosystem. We are not arriving to learn. We are arriving with a body of work that is immediately relevant.

What would you tell a founder in Lagos or Nairobi who is building right now with no funding and no connections?

I would tell them that their situation is not a disadvantage. It is a filter. It will force them to build something that actually works, that people actually pay for, and that can sustain itself without external life support. That is a better foundation than most funded startups ever achieve.

Specifically: charge money from day one. If your product solves a real problem, people will pay for it. If they will not pay, you do not have a product. Build your own core infrastructure. Do not rely entirely on third-party APIs for the systems that define your business. Measure what matters. Paying users are more important than registered users. Uptime is more important than downloads. Revenue is more important than GMV.

And stop comparing your trajectory to funded startups. The founder who raised five million dollars is not five million ahead of you. They are five million in debt to someone else’s expectations. If your business is profitable, you are already ahead of most of them. You just do not know it yet because nobody wrote a headline about it.

What is next for you?

I am focused on continuing to scale EarnIT and pushing the platform toward the next set of milestones. We are actively working on a major platform rebuild that will take the architecture to the next level. Beyond that, I am building out Ocean Trends Digital’s presence and partnerships in the UK. The opportunity here is significant, and I intend to make the most of it.

On a broader level, I want to keep speaking and writing about revenue-first technology building, because I believe the narrative in African tech needs to shift. We need to stop celebrating capital raised and start celebrating value created. That is the shift that will determine whether the African tech ecosystem produces companies that last or companies that simply make headlines before disappearing.