Odunayo Eweniyi at PiggyVest: Fostering a Savings Culture among Nigerians for a Better Future
| Case Code: LDEN218 Case Length: 12 Pages Period: - Pub Date: 2024 Teaching Note: Available |
Price: Rs.400 Organization : PiggyVest Industry :Financial Services Countries : Nigeria Themes: Women Entrepreneurs, Leading Change, FinTech,Women in Business |
Abstract Case Intro 1 Case Intro 2 Excerpts
Excerpts
The Birth of Piggyvest
Due to the severe lack of credit options, Nigerians were accustomed to paying for goods and services in cash. This forced them to rely heavily on their savings. The majority of Nigerians needed to save a minimum of 40% of their monthly income in order to survive and to pay for even the basics such as housing, healthcare, and school fees. And to top it all, excessive bank charges, poor interest rates, high inflation, and disincentivized savings at traditional financial institutions were the norm in Nigeria. Allegedly Nigerians stored their savings in wooden boxes under their beds due to the lack of proper savings and investment platforms. Moreover, since the savings system of Nigeria was not incentivized, it adversely affected the savings attitude of the people..
Building a Savings Culture in Nigeria
By mid-January of 2016, Eweniyi and her team were ready with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) of their first digital savings platform named initially as PiggyBank. The revenue (US$12,000) generated from PushCV was spent on building the platform. In April 2016, Piggybank.ng was launched as a savings-only platform where users could save as little as ₦100 per day. Eweniyi and her colleagues created a platform that not only promoted the savings culture among Nigerians but also empowered them to better manage and save their money. It assisted users to automate their savings by transferring money using their debit cards from their traditional bank accounts to their digital accounts on the PiggyBank platforms, through pre-determined auto-save features..
Impact
Despite experiencing microaggressions as a woman in a male-dominated space, Eweniyi focused on her job – teaching young people the value of their money by helping them save it. PiggyVest soon amassed the largest market share in the savings platforms category, leaving other fintech apps behind. In 2021, the startup generated much attention in the savings and investment industry, with a total of US$480 million saved by users..
Empowering Women in Nigeria
Eweniyi felt a sense of responsibility to help other women along the way and advocated for the empowerment of girls and women. She, along with her friend Damilola Odufuwa, started Wine & Whine Nigeria in 2018, a community for Nigerian women that hosted monthly women-only events and offered a safe space for discussions on gender-based violence, feminism, and financial literacy. In another endeavor to champion equality for women in Nigeria, she co-founded The Feminist Coalition (TFC) in July 2020 along with 12 young feminists from Nigeria who were equally passionate about empowering women in Nigeria..
Challenges Ahead
Despite its success, PiggyVest faced some challenges, of which gaining customer trust was one of the biggest. Customers were cautious about saving their hard-earned money in new fintech firms. Though PiggyVest was attracting millions of users to the platform, it had to work constantly to maintain their trust. According to Eweniyi, the challenge for PiggyVest was that Nigerians seemed to have a natural distrust for tech..
Exhibits
Exhibit I: Nigeria: Gross Savings (% of GDP) (1981-2021)
Exhibit II: PiggyVest Product Portfolio
Exhibit III: PiggyVest Users’ Savings (2016 to 2021)
Exhibit IV: Top 10 Fintech Apps in Nigeria Based on Number of Downloads on Google Playstore (2022)
Exhibit V: PiggyVest Users (2016 to 2022)
Exhibit VI: Odunayo Eweniyi: Awards & Recognitions
Exhibit VII: Members of the Feminist Coalition (TFC)
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