Brands/Products
OmniRetail Positions Self to Digitalise Nigeria’s Supply Chain Gap
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria’s retail market has so much potential, but while macroeconomic headwinds and currency volatility have weighed on consumer spending power in recent years, new opportunities for digitalised retail to facilitate the sale of essential goods remain.
To connect all existing parties in the supply chain, Mr Deepankar Rustagi, after spending decades in the country, founded OmniRetail, a subsidiary of OmniBiz.
Applying a different model, the company does not own warehouses, fleets, or products but rather brings distributors and logistics providers all online. Similar to Uber’s platform, OmniRetail brings manufacturers and small retailers together – unheard of in Nigeria, where only 30 per cent of goods are sold directly to consumers.
OmniBiz is an African B2B e-commerce platform for informal retailers and aims to increase retailers’ profitability 4x by helping them with procurement and inventory management and providing them with working capital.
Launched in 2019 as Mplify- a simple SaaS solution for FMCG distributors to manage their inventory and grow their sales, OmniBiz, the e-commerce arm was launched a few months after with the mission to digitize retail distribution in Africa.
One of the many declarations made to Business Post by the company is that it carries out a total transaction volume (TTV) of $1.3 billion yearly.
Mr Rustagi saw major retail companies like Walmart and Shoprite exit the African market and quickly learned that 90 per cent of Nigerian consumers shop at small informal retail stores.
He said, “Technology is solving deeply entrenched problems, and informal retail isn’t an exception. By embracing a technology-driven approach, OmniBiz is digitizing the informal essential goods ecosystem in Africa.
“OmniBiz collaborates with the supply chain stakeholders, from manufacturers to distributors, logistics providers, and retailers. We are building the future of African retail,” he told Business Post.
The OmniBiz CEO realized that if he could bring manufacturers, distributors, and retailers online on a single platform, he could double the size of Nigeria’s $41.7 billion FMCG sector.
The platform, which has over 131,000 Nigerian retailers (75 per cent of which are women-owned), gives rich data to all parties, something he claims that no one in African retail had before.
His opinion was echoed by Mr Adewale Adisa, the company’s Chief Operations Officer (COO), who noted in an interview that the company tapped into something that large retailers didn’t understand.
“We believe that if we can create a positive impact at the national level, it will eliminate many of the challenges faced by retailers. It will help rid Nigeria’s cash-heavy sector of the many problems associated with it and digitise the process.”
He explained that the company’s warehouses help make it deliver to key states in the country, adding that it has a logistics network that it hopes to expand by bringing in more retailers, partners, and players in the future.
Through the integration of its OmniStore (formerly Mystore) app, OmniBiz is able to facilitate the transactions between producers and retailers, a move to which it is adding the necessary value, including seeing how they can insure their goods. The growth engine application provides retailers with end- to- end inventory management solutions.
The company has always positioned itself as a market leader, last year, it moved to tap into the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) wave to help businesses get credit options in a timely fashion to grow their businesses.
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
An institutional investor, First Ally Capital, has strengthened a leading Nigerian financial technology company, Mathesis Analytics, to scale its proprietary credit decisioning infrastructure.
It made this possible by injecting fresh capital into the firm, which specialises in AI-powered credit decisioning infrastructure, an action that will directly support the growth and scaling of Mathesis’ core mission of providing the intelligence and infrastructure needed to bridge the credit gap for millions of unscored or underscored individuals across Nigeria.
With this investment, Mathesis will enable financial institutions to confidently assess and extend credit to borrowers who lack a formal credit history by leveraging an expanded pool of alternative behavioural and transactional data.
To date, Mathesis’ systems have supported more than 8 million loans for over 2 million unique borrowers in Nigeria, and the company is actively deploying its infrastructure to establish a growing pan-African footprint.
With the investment from First Ally Capital, Mathesis is well positioned to transform how the credit ecosystem operates, driving financial inclusion in partnership with lenders across the continent.
A significant barrier to credit access in Nigeria, which prides itself on being Africa’s largest economy, is data fragmentation. Borrowers frequently build positive financial behaviours across multiple digital platforms by repaying microfinance loans, saving through fintech wallets, or servicing Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) facilities.
However, under traditional credit infrastructure, these achievements remain invisible to new lenders.
Mathesis addresses this challenge through the concept of Personal Equity—the quantified expression of an individual’s financial behaviour aggregated across every institution with which they have transacted.
By translating these disparate signals into a precise, portable measure of creditworthiness, Mathesis creates a comprehensive credit identity that reflects the full breadth of a person’s financial life.
“True financial inclusion cannot be achieved in a vacuum; it requires structural collaboration in which lenders and fintech companies work as partners within the ecosystem.
“This investment from First Ally Capital validates our approach to reshaping credit infrastructure. By quantifying Personal Equity, we empower lenders to safely look beyond the constraints of formal credit histories and recognise a borrower’s true creditworthiness. This capital enables us to accelerate our pan-African expansion while maintaining the robust, institutional-grade infrastructure our partners rely on,” the chief executive of Mathesis Analytics, Winston Osuchukwu, stated.
On his part, the chief executive of First Ally Capital, Mr Ebenezer Olufowose, said, “At First Ally Capital, we pride ourselves on being a one-stop destination for financial solutions, offering a diverse portfolio of services ranging from investment banking and asset management to trusteeship, inclusive banking, and real estate.
“Our investment in Mathesis Analytics reflects our strong belief in the company’s vision and our commitment to supporting forward-thinking enterprises that deliver excellence.”
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
The chief executive of Canal+ Africa, Mr David Mignot, has disclosed that MultiChoice is now fully integrated into the media group.
Mr Mignot disclosed this via a statement issued on Thursday, noting that this development marks a new phase in the evolution of one of Africa’s leading pay television operators.
He noted that the integration positions MultiChoice within a global media organisation with an extensive international footprint.
“MultiChoice is now a full subsidiary of a truly international media group operating in 70 countries. The group was founded in France, is listed in London and Johannesburg, and has a strong African presence with operations in more than 45 countries,” Mr Mignot said.
The statement underscores the scale of the combined business, highlighting Canal+’s global reach alongside its significant investments across Africa.
The completion of the transaction is expected to strengthen MultiChoice’s position in the African media and entertainment market by giving it access to the broader resources, expertise and international capabilities of the Canal+ Group, while reinforcing the group’s commitment to the continent.
MultiChoice operates across sub-Saharan Africa through platforms including DStv and GOtv, serving millions of subscribers with entertainment, sports and news content.
By Adedapo Adesanya
FoodCourt, a Nigerian cloud kitchen startup backed by Y Combinator, has suspended operations after months of unpaid salaries and mounting debts to vendors triggered a staff strike and forced the company to halt customer orders, according to a report by TechCabal.
The publication reported that customers first noticed on March 4 that they could no longer place orders through the FoodCourt app after the company disabled ordering as kitchen workers, delivery personnel and branch staff embarked on strike over unpaid wages. The company also owed outstanding payments to vendors.
By April 19, FoodCourt had temporarily shut its last operating branch after suspending activities across its Lagos and Abuja locations while seeking fresh funding and restructuring the business, according to the report.
The company’s chief executive, Mr Henry Nneji, said the decision to pause operations was not caused by a single issue but by a combination of operational, organisational and working-capital challenges.
“It’s important to clarify that the decision to pause operations wasn’t driven by one single issue. We reached a point where it became clear that continuing to patch those issues while operating wasn’t the right long-term decision,” he said.
“The objective is to build a stronger business than the one that existed before the suspension. We fully intend to bring FoodCourt back,” he added in an emailed response.
The company acknowledged outstanding obligations to employees, vendors, riders and service providers, but declined to disclose the number of affected workers or the total amount owed. It said efforts were underway to resolve the liabilities as part of its restructuring process.
It was also reported that the startup’s financial difficulties worsened after expansion into additional locations increased operating costs, while its cloud kitchen model came under pressure from rising labour, logistics, food and marketing expenses.
Despite the shutdown, Mr Nneji said FoodCourt intends to relaunch after completing its restructuring, adding that the company believes demand for its products remains strong.
Founded in 2021 by Henry Nneji and Paul Adokiye Iruene, FoodCourt operates cloud kitchens under multiple virtual restaurant brands through its consumer app. According to TechCabal, the startup had previously disclosed raising $1.7 million, delivering more than one million meals and reaching $4.3 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2024.
