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Investors Give Piggybank Mobile App Savings Platform $1.1m

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By Modupe Gbadeyanka

Owners of an online and mobile app savings platform targeted at African Millennials, Piggybank.ng, have announced closing seed funding of $1.1 million from high net worth individuals led by founder of LeadPath Nigeria, Mr Olumide Soyombo, with participation from international and pan-African investors Village Capital and Ventures Platform.

In a statement made available to Business Post yesterday, the Nigerian start-up company said it would deploy the VC investment for license acquisition and product development.

Piggybank.ng has recorded 20-35 percent month-on-month growth in user traction over the past 12 months; primarily from peer-to-peer recommendations, its referral program – Piggybank Stories, and grass-roots social media campaigns.

The start-up plans to also invest in additional marketing spend to accelerate its growth trajectory.

Having completed accelerator programs with Blackbox, the CcHub’s Pitch Drive, powered by Google for Entrepreneurs, and Google Launchpad Africa, Piggybank.ng has built a savings community of over 53,000 registered users of which approximately 60 percent are Nigerian Millennials, who have saved in excess of $5 million, with a savings growth of 3000 percent between 2016-17.

Founded in 2016 by Somto Ifezue, Odunayo Eweniyi and Joshua Chibueze, graduates of Covenant University, Nigeria, Piggybank.ng is positioned to fill a void for tens of millions of Nigerians, who have no access to credit, in a country where up to two years’ rent is often required upfront to secure a home.

Targeting low-middle income savers in Nigeria, of which there are 26.5 million with a market size of $2.2 billion, the fintech start-up is an automated savings platform where savers manage their finances by depositing small amounts of money [starting from as little as $1/day] on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, depending on their saving target, free of charge.

Savers can expect to earn on average 6 percent per annum on automated savings or 10.95 percent per annum on the fixed deposit product, Safelock and can withdraw funds once per quarter.

Piggybank.ng generates its revenues through asset management, which currently stands at 5-7 percent.

According to Odunayo Eweniyi, co-founder and COO of Piggybank.ng, “In a country such as Nigeria, almost everything has to be paid in advance. The majority of Nigerians struggle to save their income, manage cash flow and build credit, which is a huge problem as around 80 percent of Nigerians need to save a minimum of 40 percent of their monthly income, in order to survive.

“This is the sheer scale of the challenge we are embracing; to actively promote a savings culture in Nigeria and act as the savings infrastructure to millions of people who want a safe, transparent and innovative platform to assist them in managing their finances, on their journeys to financial freedom.”

Also commenting, Joshua Chibueze, co-founder and CMO of Piggybank said, “Today’s (Thursday) announcement allows us to expand and capitalise on the many opportunities that the market presents us with.

“Our growth so far has been stimulated almost entirely by peer-to-peer advocacy and our investment in the highest quality customer service, so we know the market is there, and the product has been built, modified, tested and ratified by users.

“With this fundraise, we can invest significantly in our people and products, as we build a digital financial warehouse accessible to millions of Africans whose savings woes we want to put firmly behind them.”

Olumide Soyombo, Co-Founder Leadpath adds: “Piggybank.ng is a leading example of how Africans are innovating to solve African problems. In this case, the team is applying technology and innovation to solve a problem facing millions of Nigerians; how can they accrue enough money to make down-payments on so many ‘life events’, in a market where there’s little to no access to credit?

“Led by a solid and experienced executive team, who have recorded significant growth after two years of bootstrapping, and have built a product that is ready to scale, I’m excited to have led other local angel investors this investment round, and to now work closely with the team to grow the platform”

In addition to securing its seed funding of $1.1 million, Piggybank.ng recently acquired a micro-financing license from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which provides the relevant regulatory cover, allowing them independence from partnering with banks.

This month, the company will be expanding its product range to include Smart Target, a group savings tool, that can be scaled from family-size to large corporations, based on the age-long West African tradition of ajo or esusu (savings in the local parlance) to leverage the power of communal savings and harness the network effect of accountability.

Available on iOS and Android, Piggybankers save an average of N20,000 per month (about $55) and in contrast to conventional bank savings accounts, the platform restricts withdrawals until an agreed date or users can withdraw their savings on a quarterly basis, whereby savings drawn outside of  the agreed day attract a 5 percent early withdrawal fee.

A recent survey conducted by Piggybank.ng, which saw 5,000+ responses, revealed that the top 5 areas Nigerians are saving for include investments, starting a business, rent and unforeseen circumstances e.g health and vacations.

Co-founder and CEO of the firm, Somto Ifezue, stated that, “The research reveals that our savers are hardworking, focussed, and serious about reaching their savings goals. Already, we are seeing thousands of our users reaping the benefits of addressing their financial future by weaving Piggybank.ng into their daily lives, making it a savings ritual. We’re looking forward to helping thousands more in the coming months and years reach their financial goals”.

Modupe Gbadeyanka is a fast-rising journalist with Business Post Nigeria. Her passion for journalism is amazing. She is willing to learn more with a view to becoming one of the best pen-pushers in Nigeria. Her role models are the duo of CNN's Richard Quest and Christiane Amanpour.

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WhatsApp Introduces Web Calling, Call Transfer, QuickHD Features

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WhatsApp Web Calling feature

By Aduragbemi Omiyale

WhatsApp has been updated with a web calling feature, allowing users to now make and receive audio and video calls, both one-on-one and group, directly from WhatsApp Web.

A notice from the Meta-owned messaging platform disclosed that this feature works without the need to download any app.

It was disclosed that this update was made to WhatsApp to make it easier for users to make calls wherever they are and on whatever device, phone or laptop.

Users will have access to features available on their other devices, including screen sharing, reactions, and a dedicated Calls tab with full call history and favourites, all from their browsers.

WhatsApp noted that calls from this feature are end-to-end encrypted, with no time limits and at no cost, as it is the same private experience they expect from the platform.

WhatsApp has also been embedded with easy call transfer, enabling the movement of an active group call from one device to another without hanging up. Users can seamlessly transfer calls to WhatsApp Web or Desktop when they arrive home to collaborate on a larger screen – or vice versa.

The platform further said it now has QuickHD, which allows for an improved video experience at the beginning of a call. With QuickHD, users can now enjoy high-definition video immediately in the very first few seconds of the call.

In addition, it has launched noise suppression to remove the background noise around callers so their voices come through clearly to the person on the other end, even in loud or busy environments. This can be managed at any time in in-call settings.

WhatsApp said these features are rolling out gradually and will be available to everyone soon, expressing its desire to make WhatsApp calling simpler to use.

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Modded Hosting With Reliable Backups: Biome Types Guide

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Modded Hosting

Modded Minecraft worlds take weeks to build. Custom biomes, terraformed landscapes, established bases — losing any of it to a corrupted chunk or a failed update is devastating. Backups aren’t optional for modded servers. They’re essential.

Modded hosting with reliable backups protects everything players have built across every minecraft biome types the pack introduces — without requiring manual backup routines that nobody remembers to run.

Why Modded Worlds Are More Vulnerable to Data Loss

Vanilla Minecraft worlds are relatively stable. Modded worlds have more ways to break. Mod updates can corrupt chunk data if block IDs change. Crashes during chunk generation leave partial files. Automated farms that run while no players are online can cause chunk-level issues over time.

Biomes added by mods require extra care. Changing biome mods later can cause unexpected problems. If the old biome data no longer exists, Minecraft may not know how to read parts of the world anymore. The Minecraft Wiki explains that every generated chunk keeps its own biome information in the save. Modded biomes require their mod to be present to load correctly — removing the mod without migrating chunks first causes permanent data loss in those areas.

Minecraft Biome Types: What Mods Add

People often focus on giant mountains or rare structures, but smaller biome changes matter too. A carefully designed minecraft grass biome can completely change the appearance of an entire region. Once that combines with improved forests, rivers, and mountain generation, exploration naturally takes longer because there’s almost always another interesting place nearby. There’s a massive difference once biome mods are installed. Biomes O’ Plenty alone adds over 80 biomes. Terralith adds another 95 plus, although it still builds worlds using Minecraft’s regular generation system rather than a custom one. Oh The Biomes You’ll Go adds tropical and fantasy biomes not found in either.

Each of these creates a richer world to explore — and more unique terrain to protect. A player who spends two sessions exploring and settling in a modded cherry blossom grove loses something irreplaceable if that chunk gets corrupted without a backup.

Content creator and modpack player Noxite has described modded biome exploration as one of the most memorable experiences in the game — “every new biome feels like discovering a location that exists only in your world.” Backups protect that discovery.

Many players only start thinking about backups after something goes wrong. It’s surprisingly easy for a modded world to develop problems. Maybe the server restarts halfway through chunk generation, or a mod update changes world data in a way the old save no longer understands. Even experienced server owners don’t get through every update without issues. Sometimes everything looks fine until someone explores a new biome and discovers broken chunks. At that point, having a recent backup is usually the simplest solution instead of trying to repair damaged terrain piece by piece.

What a Reliable Backup System Looks Like for Modded Servers

For modded worlds, backup requirements go beyond vanilla minimums:

  1. Daily automated backups — at minimum; hourly for active community servers
  2. Full world backups — not just player data; entire world folder including all dimensions
  3. Pre-update snapshots — automatic backup triggered before any mod or server update
  4. Offsite storage — backups stored separately from the server to survive hardware failure
  5. Easy restoration — one-click restore to a specific backup without technical support

Biome backup

Protecting Every Biome You’ve Explored

Minecraft biomes wiki entries for modded biomes often include notes about save compatibility across versions. The community’s experience is consistent: mod updates break worlds more often than player actions do. Regular backups are the only reliable protection.

Choose modded hosting with reliable backups that runs automatically, stores multiple restore points, and makes restoration simple. The time investment in setting up proper backups is always less than the time lost rebuilding after a preventable data loss event.

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5 Ways AI is Transforming Consumer Intelligence and Analytics

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AI consumer analytics

The rules have changed. How companies actually know their customers — really know them — looks almost nothing like it did ten years ago. Old-school research methods are drowning. Too slow, too narrow, too dependent on humans manually stitching together datasets that have already gone cold. Markets shift in days now, not quarters. And the cost of a slow read on consumer behavior keeps climbing. This isn’t just a tooling upgrade. The underlying logic of how businesses decide what to build, what to charge, and who to reach has been gutted and rebuilt from scratch. Staying reactive isn’t a strategy anymore. It’s a liability.

1. Real-Time Data Processing and Pattern Recognition

Consumer intelligence used to run on stale numbers. Analysts dug into data weeks — sometimes months — after whatever actually happened. Modern AI kills that lag. Entirely. These systems chew through enormous volumes of behavioral data on the fly, surfacing patterns that human teams couldn’t find in the same timeframe with ten times the headcount. Machine learning algorithms can process millions of customer interactions, transactions, and behavioral signals simultaneously — pulling clean signal out of what would otherwise be undifferentiated noise. A retailer can track sentiment across social media, reviews, and support tickets right now, catching a brewing problem or an emerging trend in hours rather than weeks. Inventory shifts, pricing moves, message pivots — all of it happens before a trend fully crystallizes. That’s a different game entirely.

2. Predictive Analytics and Consumer Behavior Forecasting

Here’s what actually changed: AI stops consumer intelligence from being a backward-looking exercise. Instead of cataloguing what customers already did, companies can now forecast what they’re likely to do next — and with striking accuracy. Advanced ML models thread together historical patterns and live behavioral signals to predict churn, flag high-value prospects, and project demand across entire product lines. A telecom company can spot which customers are quietly drifting toward a competitor before they ever make the switch — and intervene first. That’s not a marginal improvement. It’s a fundamentally different posture. Resources flow toward the segments that actually matter, rather than spreading thin across the whole base and hoping something sticks.

3. Personalization at Scale

Consumers expect personalized experiences. Full stop. Meeting that expectation at scale — for millions of people at once — is simply beyond what human analysts and traditional segmentation can deliver. Machine learning models read individual purchase histories, browsing patterns, preferences, and demographic signals to build dynamic profiles that drive product recommendations, custom messaging, and tailored interfaces. When building and refining these individualized profiles, marketers who need to enrich their first-party data with verified behavioral signals rely on audience data providers to ensure their models are trained on accurate, high-quality consumer information. An e-commerce platform can serve each visitor a genuinely different experience — different layouts, different offers, different content — all built around that visitor’s unique fingerprint. Conversion lifts. Lifetime value climbs. People respond when recommendations actually fit their lives, not just the average of everyone else’s.

4. Sentiment Analysis and Brand Perception Monitoring

Knowing how consumers feel about a brand means wading through unstructured mess. Reviews, comment threads, support tickets, social posts, video captions — none of it parses cleanly by hand at any useful speed. Natural language processing handles it. NLP systems automatically scan text-based content across digital channels, classifying sentiment as positive, negative, or neutral while bucketing feedback by topic, product feature, or customer segment. An automaker can track online conversations about a specific reliability concern and catch it before it snowballs into a full-blown reputation crisis. No waiting for quarterly surveys. No lag. Brand perception monitoring becomes continuous — and decisions about product fixes, messaging shifts, or service interventions get grounded in real signal rather than gut instinct.

5. Competitive Intelligence and Market Positioning Analysis

Competitive intelligence used to mean manual tracking, sprawling spreadsheets, and perpetually incomplete pictures. AI automates the entire collection-and-analysis loop. ML models watch competitor pricing moves, product launches, promotions, and messaging shifts across digital channels — then stack that data against a company’s own position. Gaps surface. Threats register earlier. A financial services firm can monitor exactly which themes competitors are pushing on social media and which ones are actually generating engagement — then sharpen their own positioning accordingly. Real-time visibility into competitive dynamics means strategic calls about where to invest, which markets to enter, and how to stand apart in crowded categories aren’t made blind anymore.

Conclusion

What AI has done to consumer intelligence isn’t incremental. It’s structural. Real-time processing of massive datasets. Forecasting future behavior instead of autopsying the past. Personalization that reaches millions, not hundreds. Continuous sentiment monitoring. Automated competitive tracking. None of these were realistic options a decade ago. They are now. Companies that wire these capabilities into their core operations make faster, sharper decisions — ones that show up directly in revenue, satisfaction scores, and market share. Those that don’t will keep falling further behind. And the gap between organizations that wield these tools well and those still grinding through traditional approaches? It’s not closing. It’s widening every quarter.

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