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By Abubakar Yunusa
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igital freight forwarding startup, Topship has raised a $2.5 million seed round from institutional and individual investors. With the funding, the company seeks to create the easiest way for African businesses to export and import parcels and cargo to their customers, suppliers, and distributors worldwide. The funding was led by Flexport and backed by Y CombinatorSoma Capital, Starling Ventures, Olive Tree Capital, Capital X and True Capital. The individual investors in the round include Immad Akhund, Mercury CEO, and Arash Ferdowsi, co-founder of Dropbox. Topship was founded in 2020 during the pandemic when cofounder and CEO Moses Enenwali noticed a surge in merchants’ needs for shipping parcels and cargo outside Nigeria. He had built relationships with these merchants following his time with logistics company ACE Logistics
PEOPLES DAILY, TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2022
Nigerian startup, Topship secures $2.5 million to boost international shipping and e-commerce fulfilment provider, Sendbox. According to Enewali, Topship allows 1,500 merchants to move cargo and parcels from Nigeria to over 150 countries. Although it can help Nigerian merchants receive parcel deliveries from the other way round, they can only
accept cargo deliveries from the U.S., the U.K and China. Enewali said the company is exploring other revenue streams, including trade financing and customs clearance charges. The company has recorded a 50% month-on-month revenue growth since getting into YC this January.
“I think what YC does more than anything is just push you to dive as deep as possible in understanding your users,” said the CEO about Topship’s revenue growth after YC. “Looking into the future, a lot of it’s coming from that ethos of the user being the most important
piece of the puzzle, and we have to be obsessive about it. We’re taking all the learnings and insights that we’ve learned from our users over the past five months or six months and building it into the product in a merchants-focused way,” he said.
Nigeria’s inflation rate hits eightmonth high at 16.82% By Abubakar Yunusa
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he consumer price index, which measures the rate of increase in the price of goods and services, climbed to 16.82 per cent in April 2022 on the back of surging food and gas prices. With the development, it means that the headline inflation rate slowed down in April when compared to the same month in the previous year. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said this in its Consumer Price Index (CPI) report for April 2022, released on Monday. The figure represents the highest rate recorded since August 2021 which is 0.9% points higher than the 15.92% recorded in the previous month (March 2022). “On a month-on-month basis, the headline index increased by 1.76% in April 2022, compared to 1.74% increase recorded in the previous month,” the report reads. “Similarly, the urban inflation rate increased to 17.35% (year-onyear) in April 2022 from 18.68% recorded in April 2021, while the rural inflation rate increased to 16.32% in April 2022 from 17.57% in April 2021.”
Commandant Intelligence ResponseTeam (IRT) Mr. Olatunji Disu throwing more light on the activities of the suspects during their parade at IRT Headquarters on Friday in Abuja. Photo: Mahmud Isa
Create special FX trading window for BDCs, ABCON tells CBN
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he Association of Bureaux De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON) has asked the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to establish BDCs’ autonomous foreign exchange trading window (BAFEX) with a determined maximum daily limit. The association said it would enable eligible BDCs to access dollars from banks, autonomous markets, and diaspora forex widows at the prevailing market prices. ABCON said this in a statement issued over the weekend at the conclusion of its national executive council meeting in Lagos. Speaking at the meeting, Aminu Gwadabe, ABCON president, said the creation of the BAFEX window is one of the strategies that the association came up with to save the naira
from further decline and enhance exchange rate stability. Gwadabe said the depreciation of the naira against global currencies was due to pressure from rising dollar demand without sufficient liquidity to meet the demands from retail end users, manufacturers and other key players in the economy. The ABCON boss also requested for enhancement of existing BDCs’ automation portals to file transaction returns on CBN/ ABCON/NFIU/NIBSS portals for effective regulatory monitoring and supervision. He sought the creation of an automation portal to encourage the registration of undocumented and unlicensed operators for effective monitoring, identification and tracking of their transactions.
The president said the reluctance of the CBN to open new windows through which foreign exchange can be attracted to the economy remains a key factor in the naira’s continued fall. He said there is an urgent need to review the guidelines on BDC’s scope of operations to include participation in payment space, such as agency banking, point of sale (PoS) services, inbound and outbound forex transfers, ATM forex services, to reflect the global business model practice. Gwadabe said ABCON developed multiple applications for BDCs’ transformation from being CBN cash dispensers to globally competitive entities with the capacity to attract foreign capital flows to the economy. “We support any measures that would lead to compliance
with the Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT), supporting CBN’s exchange rate stability policies and security agencies to punish any BDC operator breaching corporate governance and compliance guidelines,” he added. “It is our sincere belief that the BDCs need to be integrated back officially to ensure their continuous potent role in exchange rate stability management.” Following the apex bank’s decision to stop the sale of forex to BDCs, ABCON has continued to make repeated calls for the restoration of the forex sale. On Friday, the naira depreciated against the US dollar to close at N419/$ at the official market and N595/$ at the parallel market.
