In a market where small businesses often juggle fragmented tools to manage sales, payments, inventory, and customer relationships, Zirro, a Nigerian startup, is betting on an all-in-one approach.
The platform combines core business operations into a single system designed for informal and formal SMEs operating across digital and physical channels.
Zirro continues to evolve with an ambition to move small businesses from fragmented, manual operations into structured, data-driven systems built for the realities of African commerce.
Tolu Adesina, CEO of Zirro, in this interview with BusinessDay’s Folake Balogun, explains the thoughts behind the product, challenges of building for African business realities, and how the company is approaching AI, data, and competition from global software providers.
Why build an integrated platform rather than specialise in one area?
Adesina said Zirro was designed around a systems problem, not a single feature gap.
“The problem we are solving is not a broken function but a broken system,” he explains. “A founder in Lagos is not struggling with just payments or just inventory. They are struggling with everything at once, and none of the tools they use talk to each other.”
He noted that many small businesses rely on a patchwork of WhatsApp, spreadsheets, notebooks, and bank transfers. The result, he says, is operational fragmentation.
“When something breaks, there’s no single place to go. We built an integrated suite because fragmentation is the core problem.”
Balancing simplicity with sophistication
For Zirro, Sophistication should live in the outcome, not the interface, Adesina said.
“A founder does not need to see every lever behind the scenes. They just need to know their stock is accurate, orders are tracked, and customers are remembered.”
He stated that the platform is designed to grow with users over time. “The deeper tools, such as analytics, supplier tracking, and team permissions, should reveal themselves as the business grows. We don’t front-load everything at once.”
Changing behaviour among SMEs
While speaking about adoption, Adesina said the resistance to digital tools is often misunderstood.
“It’s rarely about rejection of technology, but it’s about trust and timing,” he said. “Most founders are using notebooks because nothing else has worked for their reality.”
He believes adoption improves when pain becomes unavoidable.“A lost order or missing stock forces a rethink. Our job is not to force migration, but to meet them where they already are.”
What users respond to most
According to Adesina, early users are most impressed by Zirro’s unified business view.
“When founders see everything in one place, such as orders, stock, payments, customers, they often realise how much they were mentally tracking before.”
Customer management has also been a strong draw. “Many have been selling for years without formally tracking customers. When that history becomes visible, it changes how they run the business.”
AI strategy: cautious and practical
While Artificial Intelligence is becoming a dominant theme in enterprise software, Zirro is taking a measured approach.
“We are not interested in AI for optics,” Adesina said. “We are interested in real utility.”
He highlights specific use cases such as demand forecasting, customer churn detection, and performance summaries.
“If it doesn’t save meaningful time or prevent a real mistake, it’s not ready,” Adesina said.
The role of data in SME growth
Adesina argues that most SMEs operate on intuition due to a lack of structured data.
“Founders know roughly what’s selling or who their best customers are, but not precisely,” he said. With an integrated system like Zirro, patterns become clearer.
“You can see what sells fastest before the weekend, who hasn’t reordered in 90 days, and what payment channels convert best. The goal is to make that visibility automatic, not a weekend exercise.”
Technical challenges in African markets
Building for local conditions introduces constraints not seen in more mature digital markets.
“Connectivity is the biggest issue,” he said. “We cannot assume a stable internet. The product must be fast and resilient even on weak networks.”
“Nigeria has a fragmented payments ecosystem. We integrate local rails because that’s how customers actually pay,” Adesina said. “We are asking people to move from something physical they can see to a digital system they can’t. Every design decision has to reduce uncertainty.”
Competing with global software giants
While tools such as QuickBooks, Zoho, and Salesforce dominate globally, Adesina believes their limitations in local contexts create an opening.
“They were not built for a founder selling on Instagram and receiving bank transfers,” he said.
He argued that global platforms often require businesses to adapt to the software, rather than the reverse.
“Our approach is the opposite. We start from how Nigerian businesses actually operate from WhatsApp, Instagram, local payments, and build the system around that.”
Building local infrastructure
“We see it less as ideology and more as necessity. Infrastructure gets built when real problems are solved locally,” Adesina said.
“When African businesses run on African-built systems, the data stays within the ecosystem. That has long-term implications for credit, insurance, and investment.”
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