Technology
Interswitch CEO Rules Out Workforce Reduction
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigerian unicorn, Interswitch, has revealed that it is not cutting jobs amid global shocks that are causing tech companies to resize their workforce.
The business environment is globally facing economic turbulence that is seeing companies like Twitter, Netflix, Walmart, and other startups downsize.
The African continent has not been exempted with tech startups with footprints in Nigeria like Getequity, Alerzo and 54gene, among others, also reportedly downsizing. Unicorns are not exempted with Francophone Africa-centred company, Wave cutting about 15 per cent of its workforce in June.
However, the CEO of Interswitch, Mr Mitchell Elegbe, while responding to a query from Business Post at an event to mark the 20th year of the company’s existence in Lagos, stated that the firm does not have most of the challenges that other fintechs have, adding that the organisation has enough in the reserves to withstand shocks.
“We run a very profitable business, we are not in the business of raising funds every year because we are able to generate enough money to grow our business. When you are able to grow profitably, you keep reserves for those shocks.
“Last year, Interswitch wanted to recruit about 300 more staff, but we did about 250, we couldn’t get the number we wanted, we lost some but there is still a big gap to fill,” Mr Elegbe said.
The Interswitch CEO added that the company will be looking to recruit more hands as it continues to deliver its expansive services.
“Interswitch has no intention. Retrenchment is not even anywhere near the horizon. In the last 20 years, we never had to retrench staff. We believe in growing sustainably… we try to grow in a way that we can sustain,” he added.
He noted that although shocks were not unprecedented, Interswitch’s management has designed its structure to withstand the pressures building on its experience of 20 years.
“The first thing when you do when you receive shocks is not to shock your staff; they have got families, they have got dependents, and there is a lot more that happens when you retrench staff and for Interswitch, even in the instance we are not profitable, it is our responsibility that our staff can meet their responsibilities.”
While analysts point out that job cuts take second place behind the competition for talent as the biggest concern for companies in 2022, Mr Elegbe said that the company is creating a structure that makes it competitive within the ecosystem.
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
One of the players in the Nigerian gaming industry, Secure Electronic Technology (SET) Plc, has appointed Ms Leticia Otomewo as its acting secretary.
This followed the expiration of the company’s service contract with the former occupier of the seat, Ms Irene Attoe, on January 31, 2026.
A statement to the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited on Thursday said Ms Otomewo would remain the organisation’s scribe in an acting capacity, pending the ratification and appointment of a substantive company secretary at the next board meeting.
She was described in the notice signed by the Managing Director of the firm, Mr Oyeyemi Olusoji, as “a results-driven executive with 22 years of experience in driving business growth, leading high-performing teams, and delivering innovative solutions.”
The acting secretary is also said to be “a collaborative leader with a passion for mentoring and developing talent.”
“The company assures the investing public that all Company Secretariat responsibilities and regulatory obligations will continue to be discharged in full compliance with the Companies and Allied Matters Act, applicable regulations, and the Nigerian Exchange Limited Listing Rules,” the disclosure assured.
Meanwhile, the board thanked Ms Attoe “for professionalism and contributions to the Company during the period of her engagement and wishes her well in her future endeavours.”
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Russian government on Thursday confirmed it has blocked the WhatsApp messaging service, as it moves to further control information flow in the country.
It urged Russians to use a new state-backed platform called Max instead of the Meta-owned service.
WhatsApp issued a statement earlier saying Russia had attempted to “fully block” its messaging service in the country to force people toward Max, which it described as a “surveillance app.”
“Today the Russian government attempted to fully block WhatsApp in an effort to drive people to a state-owned surveillance app,” WhatsApp posted on social media platform X.
“Trying to isolate over 100 million users from private and secure communication is a backwards step and can only lead to less safety for people in Russia,” it said, adding: “We continue to do everything we can to keep users connected.”
Russia’s latest move against social media platforms and messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram comes amid a wider attempt to drive users toward domestic and more easily controlled and monitored services, such as Max.
Russia’s telecoms watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has accused messaging apps Telegram and WhatsApp of failing to comply with Russian legislation requiring companies to store Russian users’ data inside the country, and of failing to introduce measures to stop their platforms from being used for allegedly criminal or terrorist purposes.
It has used this as a basis for slowing down or blocking their operations, with restrictions coming into force since last year.
For Telegram, it may be next, but so far the Russian government has been admittedly slowing down its operations “due to the fact that the company isn’t complying with the requirements of Russian legislation.”
The chat service, founded by Russian developers but headquartered in Dubai, has been a principal target for Roskomnadzor’s scrutiny and increasing restrictions, with users reporting sluggish performance on the app since January.
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigerian startup, Decide, has emerged as the fourth most accurate Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent for spreadsheet tasks globally, according to results from SpreadsheetBench, a widely referenced benchmark for evaluating AI performance on real-world spreadsheet problems.
According to the founder, Mr Abiodun Adetona, the ranking places Decide alongside well-funded global AI startups, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Mr Adetona, an ex-Flutterwave developer, also revealed that Decide now has over 3,000 users, including some who are paying customers, a signal to the ability of the startup to scale in the near future.
SpreadsheetBench is a comprehensive evaluation framework designed to push Large Language Models (LLMs) to their limits in understanding and manipulating spreadsheet data. While many benchmarks focus on simple table QA, SpreadsheetBench treats a spreadsheet as a complex ecosystem involving spatial layouts, formulas, and multi-step reasoning. So far, only three agents rank higher than Decide, namely Nobie Agent, Shortcut.ai, and Qingqiu Agent.
Mr Adetona said SpreadsheetBench measures how well AI agents can handle practical spreadsheet tasks such as writing formulas, cleaning messy data, working across multiple sheets, and reasoning through complex Excel workflows. Decide recorded an 82.5% accuracy score, solving 330 out of 400 verified tasks.
“The result reflects sustained investment in applied research, product iteration, and learning from real-world spreadsheet workloads across a wide range of use cases,” Mr Adetona told Business Post.
For Mr Adetona, who built Decide out of frustration with how much time professionals spend manually cleaning data, debugging formulas, and moving between sheets, “This milestone highlights how focused engineering and domain-specific AI development can deliver frontier-level performance outside of large research organisations. By concentrating on practical business data problems and building systems grounded in real user environments, we believe smaller teams can contribute meaningfully to advancing applied AI.”
“For Decide, this is a foundation for continued progress in intelligent spreadsheet and analytics automation,” he added.
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