In a country where every naira counts and prices seem to rise by the day, one entrepreneur is on a mission to make shopping smarter, simpler, and more affordable.
Meet Amina Asu-Beks, founder of Prizeless, an AI-powered shopping assistant designed to help Nigerians stretch their budgets, compare prices seamlessly, and find the very best deals online.
Born and raised in Lagos, Amina’s story is deeply rooted in the everyday struggles of Nigerian households—juggling budgets, navigating unpredictable market prices, and finding ways to make every shopping list work.
What began as a fun side project comparing product prices on Facebook back in 2016 has now evolved into a fast-growing platform built for the 99% of Nigerians who are price-sensitive shoppers.
In this interview with Today Africa, Amina Asu-Beks shares how her background, resilience, and years of research shaped Prizeless, why she believes the timing is perfect for such a solution, and the bold vision she has for empowering millions of Nigerians to shop smart in the face of inflation.
Tell us more about your business
“My name is Amina Asu-Beks, founder of Prizeless,” she says. “It’s a price comparison tool.
An AI shopping assistant that helps online shoppers to compare and monitor product prices in the markets—helping them make the right and smart buying decisions when shopping online.”
Prizeless isn’t just about comparing prices. It’s a kind of guardian of the wallet. “You can give it a budget,” she explains. “Let’s say you have 200,000 Naira, Prizeless will find the best deals that maximize that budget.”
The tool, she insists, is designed not for the 1% but for the vast majority of Nigerians who count every naira before spending.
Tell us a bit about your background and how it influenced your business
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Amina’s story begins in Festac Town, Lagos, where childhood errands to Agboju Market sharpened her sensitivity to money. Her mother would hand her a shopping list and a strict budget.
However, the market always had a way of upending carefully laid plans. “Sometimes when we get to the market, the budget is not correlating with the actual price,” she recalls. “So of course, anybody who grew up that way understands what it means to budget and what it means to maximize your purchasing power.”
That early training shaped the core of Prizeless. But her path wasn’t linear. She studied at the University of Calabar, where she also launched her first business, a food venture. “It went well, but it didn’t go well in the end,” she says with a shrug.
By 2015, e-commerce in Nigeria was still in its early stages of development. OLX was alive, Jumia was a shadow of what it would become, and Amina and a friend began casually comparing product prices from different online platforms, posting their findings on Facebook.
What began as fun soon revealed itself as a market opportunity. A manager at Jumia told her about price comparison platforms in the West, and Amina dove into research.
That research stretched for nearly a decade. She built her career in marketing—affiliate marketing with Amazon, then business consulting, eventually rising to head of marketing at a firm in 2023.
But the entrepreneurial itch never left. “The e-commerce industry in Nigeria is actually very untapped, full of potential,” she says. “So when the time came, I knew I had to focus on it full time.”
How did you validate that there’s a market for Prizeless?
For Amina, validation didn’t come from spreadsheets or pitch decks, but from watching Nigerians shop.
“60% of Nigerian consumers are actually price-sensitive shoppers,” she says. Inflation only sharpened that reality.
“When we launched the MVP last year, we didn’t do any paid ads,” she recalls. “It was purely organic. People chatted us up on Twitter saying, ‘This is amazing, can you guys add this and that?’”
Even institutions seemed to echo her vision. The Bank of Industry launched PriceSenseNg.ng, a tool to track market prices for commodities, followed by a similar initiative from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics.
“So validating it was very easy,” she concludes. “It just shows the need is real.”
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Don’t you think these tools are direct competitors to Prizeless?
Amina smiles at the suggestion. “No. It’s a similar product, but we’re not doing exactly the same thing,” she says.
While government tools tracked market commodities, Prizeless envisioned itself as more: “an AI shopping assistant, building a community of people who take their finances and budgets very seriously.”
Competitors, in her eyes, aren’t threats but affirmations. “It actually shows I’m on the right path,” she says firmly.
How do you ensure that you protect the users from being baited by fake sellers?
Here, Amina is emphatic. “Our loyalty is more to the consumer than it is to the e-commerce stores,” she says.
Every store onboarded to Prizeless—15 at the MVP stage—was carefully vetted. “We know their managers or CEOs personally. Most are in Computer Village; we know their stores. So like I said, our loyalty is to the consumers.”
That trust, she insists, is non-negotiable. “If there’s a problem, the consumer holds us responsible. We’re standing in the gap because they trust us.”
What are the trends that you’ve observed based on the customer behaviour?
Consumer behavior, Amina notes, is shifting. “Right now, people would rather buy another brand because that brand is cheaper,” she explains. Brand loyalty, once prized, is giving way to affordability.
She categorizes Nigerian shoppers into three: the price-sensitive, the brand-loyal, and the quality-driven.
But inflation has pushed many from one category to another. “Nigerians have become really price sensitive and budget sensitive when shopping,” she says.
What are the biggest misconceptions about your industry?
“The biggest one is that the market is not ready,” she says. “And I always tell people—that’s not true.”
She gives an example: Wakanow.com, a flight price comparison tool; Google Shopping, a global reference.
Nigerians, she argues, are more ready than people think. “Look at Temu. When it launched, Nigerians went crazy because it promised affordable products.”
But unlike social commerce platforms such as Instagram or WhatsApp—where scams abound—Prizeless offers accountability. “You can always hold us responsible if anything happens,” she says.
What organic strategies did you use to bring people on board?
Before launching in October 2024, Amina relied on pure grit and community.
A small PR team of 25 friends spread the word on WhatsApp, Twitter, and Instagram. A waitlist campaign brought 1,000 signups in just a month.
“Our active users are between 30 to 40%—about 400 active users—and we’ve not run any paid ads,” she says proudly. “It’s purely organic.”
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How did you raise capital to start your business?
The answer is raw.
“I actually got fired from my previous job,” she says. “It was like somebody pushed me into the water and said, just go.”
The experience shook her. “You don’t realize you don’t have savings until you’re fired,” she admits.
But a crypto investment became her lifeline. She cashed out and used the funds to bootstrap Prizeless.
“I believe in bootstrapping,” she says. “But now we’re in conversations with angel investors. For me, funding is about acceleration—it speeds up growth.”
How do you plan to keep Prizeless running with the state of the economy?
“The economy will not get better,” she says matter-of-factly. “We’re not going to wake up one day and it’s N50 to a dollar. It’s not going to happen.”
For Amina, the answer lies in structure. “My problem is how can I create structures to rise above that disadvantage,” she explains.
Whether or not investor money comes in, she insists, “Nothing is going to happen to my platform. I will keep building with the little resources that I have.”
How do these e-commerce platforms benefit from Prizeless?
Visibility, first and foremost. “When you Google a product, the first stores you see are Jumia, Konga, Jiji, Slot—the big players,” she explains.
But many smaller stores with competitive prices remain invisible.
Prizeless gives them a stage. “For retail stores, it’s an advantage to be visible to ready-to-buy users on our platform,” she says. “And we also support them with affiliate systems and even customer service issues.”
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What lesson have you learned in your journey as an entrepreneur?
Three lessons, she says without hesitation.
“Number one, God. Entrepreneurship is the biggest work of faith I’ve ever embarked on.”
Second: efficiency. “Business efficiency is very important. Lean management, elimination of unwanted processes—that’s how I work.”
Third: strategic partnerships. “I always think, what can I get for free by exchange of value? Strategic partnership is key.”
What advice would you give to others who want to start their business?
Her voice is steady, practical. “Start from where you are. Don’t wait to have all the money in the world,” she says.
“If you have $1,000, or even N100,000, ask yourself: how can I multiply this? Starting is very important. It’s better to start than not to take a step at all.”
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