We sat with Joshua Igba, the CEO and CTO of InstaDrop, an interstate courier service collaborating with B2B companies, e-commerce, marketplace and storefront providers, people that have merchants on their platform.
They help them integrate interstate courier into their platform. So they collaborate with platforms like Bumper, storefront providers that help businesses to have websites.
Also, Joshua and his team work with top logistics aggregators for B2C interstate courier outsourcing. So their mission is to be a reliable local alternative to foreign courier service in Nigeria.
Tell us a bit about yourself
My name is Joshua Igba. I am the CEO and CTO of InstaDrop. We make interstate courier service by collaborating with B2B companies, e-commerce, marketplace and storefront providers, those people that have merchants on their platform.
So we help them integrate interstate courier into their platform. So we collaborate with platforms like Bumper. We call them storefront providers, people who help businesses to have websites. So we collaborate with people like that. All of these guys, they are partnering with us, they outsource to us.
So our mission is to be a reliable local alternative to foreign courier service in Nigeria. So currently we cover Southwest, but we are waiting for six more partnerships so that we can start our expansion into 100 additional cities.
Could you tell me a bit about your entrepreneurial journey, how it all started, and what prompted you to venture into tech?
My entrepreneurial journey started in university. I had a strong background in media. I did a journalism innovation on campus, which became an instant hit. That was how I got to the spotlight.
And then being in the spotlight allowed me to have access to every aspect of school. And then as I had friends in entertainment, I had friends who were in Elect-Elect, Mechanical, who were learning how to code then. Everybody needed me to promote their project on campus. So I was in between, do I want to follow entertainment or do I want to follow technology?
So I ventured more towards entertainment because tech was not booming then. It was still new. But after toiling for a while, I started seeing some of my tech friends travel out, travel out, building their own startup and like, you got funding. Okay, let’s know about this. So that was how I picked interest in tech.
Then my good friend Yinka Adewale who is the CEO of Nomba. I told him that I would like to come and join him in Lagos for him to put me through. So he asked me to come over. So that was the first time I started learning about accelerator, white Y Combinator. Because then Yinka got into Y Combinator.
And even then, I didn’t really know much about Y Combinator. I just knew he was saying it. It was later I got to know that he had qualified for Y Combinator. So it was too late. And then by the time I realized like, wow, I think I need to go more into this technology.
And then I’ve always had challenges, thriving in tech, just because technical expertise is very expensive, very expensive. So you do projects, it gets to a point, the developer will abandon it because they got a better job. And to get a senior developer that can do work faster. It is millions per month.
I just said, look, let me just learn this thing by myself. Let me just take the pain. I started learning tech and started building my stuff. That was how I was able to conveniently bootstrap without needing to pay expensive developers.
Just bootstrap and then we started making progress. Then we launched in 2020. We experimented with all kinds of aspects of logistics between 2020 and 2022. Then in 2022, we took an 18 month break.
We saw so many challenges in logistics and we’re like if we’re gonna solve everything, we’ll just die. I was like let’s pick two things, two aspects of B2C logistics and put all our energy and soul inside it and be distinguished. So we chose to be an interstate courier service. So for example, we don’t do pick-up and delivery in Lagos.
We only deliver packages that came in from other states into Lagos. We only deliver those to the doorstep. So one of our value propositions right now is we deliver in 20 hours or much less. And the reason why we are faster is that all of the time the dispatcher could have spent in picking up. So because we don’t do any form of pickup, they invest most of their time in delivering all the interstate packages. It moves fast, like fast.
We said let every other person do pickups here and there. We just want to focus on the interstate aspects. By the time we started pitching it. people were like you guys do interstate, just say, oh, you don’t even do pickup. Oh, awesome. That means we are not your competition. We can work with you guys.
And then by the time they test us the first week and they see the speed. They were like you guys are good. Then we started approaching the corporate, that’s how we came to where we are today, saying that we are powering accessible and affordable and faster interstate courier.
What inspired you to start InstaDrop and why the name InstaDrop?
What inspired InstaDrop was COVID. And I have friends who buy and sell. They go through a lot when it comes to logistics. I’ve heard them complain so much. And I have done a couple of tech ideas that couldn’t scale, not because it was a bad idea. But I wasn’t a technical guy and I didn’t have the money to push it. My ideas were not bad. There are still things that if I settle down and I decide to continue them, I would.
During COVID, I resigned from my job and then continued one of my tech projects. And then COVID shut down that project. Then I saw that in Nigeria, every other thing shut down except transport and logistics. That was when we started hearing that essential services are allowed to operate so the government doesn’t joke with them.
I remember in the university, you do a project and then you have ASUU strike disrupted. So for the first time I learned that transport and logistics is actually a space that even COVID cannot shut down. That means if I decide to do logistics for the next 10 years, there is nothing like a union strike or government strike wanting to disrupt it.
Because the government cannot afford that transport and logistics to be shut down. I now see something in Nigeria that can work that the government and people cannot do without. So I just changed my mind. Because I’ve been a victim of you doing something and something scatters everything. If it’s not a strike, something could happen in your school and everything will just shut down, all your investment will just go.
I just said, look, I think I’m just gonna face logistics head on. And I’m the kind of guy that I have a knack for difficult things. When people are running away from something, that’s where I like to take interest. So I looked at logistics, I did my market research and I realized that a lot of people like to set up in Lagos, than setting up outside Lagos.
I’m asking myself that, okay, why are they afraid of semi-urban? Why are they comfortable with just setting up in Maryland? Why are they comfortable with Lagos only? What is it in semi-urban cities that they are afraid of? I want to know.
I said, you know what? To start this logistics, I’m not even going to start it in Lagos. Let me go and start it from a semi-urban city to understand what’s happening there and know why these guys can’t expand. So that by the time I expand to Lagos, I will know how to distinguish myself.
That was how my motivation was COVID. COVID exposed me to the idea that logistics is a business that cannot really be threatened by industrial actions.
What challenges have you faced since you started InstaDrop?
The first challenge I faced was I wasn’t technical. So the level of technology ambition in my head, I could not execute it on my own. And the level of developers that can do it, I can’t afford them. So the technical challenge was a big deal. I think it was the biggest challenge for me. By the moment I had to shut down 2022 and said we will do this thing. I’ll do this to myself. I was able to overcome that.
The other aspect is in the ecosystem, it’s easier to get funded for FinTech ideas than for logistics ideas. Also, Jumia not getting his feet early on and different logistics that are shut down has made logistics to be an ocean that you don’t want to put your feet in. So it has been very difficult raising capital.
And the level of exposure I have in my logistics journey, when I pitch, potential investors find it difficult to understand. So they tell me that if what you are saying is achievable, why are these big companies not doing it? And I’m like, they can’t do it because they could not afford to leave urban cities. They don’t know what’s happening in semi-urban cities.
I know that’s why I’m able to create the solution. So because they feel like I’m sounding too advanced, they will just say, you know what, let me just keep looking. I can’t fund you at the moment. It’s difficult raising funding, yeah. That is why I’ve just said, look, we are just going to do this thing from zero to one.
We are going to bootstrap it. So I’ve managed to make sure that we are surviving without external capital and that alone has given us much strength. And that is why now we are so confident of our processes and value offering.
Since you launched, what techniques or strategies have you used to attract and retain your customers?
One of the five reasons why everybody’s looking to do business with us is number one we are accessible, very accessible. We operate Monday to Sunday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Popular courier companies, DHL, by 4pm on Friday, they’ve all gone to bed.
We are available Monday to Sunday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. That’s number one. Number two, we always work on all public holidays, all religious holidays and festive holidays. June 12th we were open, Ileya we were open. We open like every day. Wow. Because people ship every day.
So people are like, you guys are always available, that’s nice. Okay, I’m going to test it. And then they test us on Sunday, they chat us up and then they say, oh, these guys are open. Another one is that our ETA is very fast. Our interstate is almost the same day or max the next morning. 20 hours or much less. So why that is attractive is because what it would take DHL 72 hours to do, we will do it in 20 hours.
And then what the cost it will take you to do a shipment let’s say from Lagos to Ado-ekiti. If you do it with us it’s 2000 Naira cheaper. So we are cheaper than the courier heavyweights. We are faster. Our ETA is 20 hours or much less. Then our process is also very easy to use.
Currently, we are trying to create what we call e-commerce day of the month. A day in a month where all merchants can ship one item not weighing more than 2 kg for free. Every month, you can ship 0 to 2 kg for free. Your customer will pick up at our office or they can pay a little token to get it to their doorstep.
You’re into logistics and in logistics you need vehicles that will be conveying the packages from one state to another. So is it that your company has its own vehicles or their own means of transportation?
How would I put it? We have people who have vehicles, but we invest in them. It’s like co-ownership. You understand? Okay. But the bikes are ours.
InstaDrop is building the delivery APIs and physical infrastructure for 20 hours or less interstate delivery for 40 million Nigerian businesses. Can you throw more lights on this?
Number one, we are building a digital API infrastructure which is already ready. So what we do is that we develop a custom API for each partner. So that if any partner requires preferential treatment, we can grant it to them without it affecting the other partners.
Let’s say every other partner’s starting rate is 4,500 but your company approaches us and explains your business model and pleads that we support you. And you need us to give you maybe at a 2500 rate so we can achieve that for your company only without it affecting the pricing of other companies.
Every partner is on the unique API for pricing. Yes, so that way we are flexible enough to partner with any company. In fact, we even have a company that is offering us to do 1,500 per shipment, which is far below our starting price. So how do you want to help such a partner? Or how do you want to collaborate with such a partner without it affecting other partners?
That’s how flexible our APIs are and that’s why we know that no matter the company you are, at every level of conversation that we have, we can partner with you. So we believe that through various payment partnerships we can reach all the 40 million businesses in Nigeria that are doing business.
Take for example, if Moniepoint finalizes the partnership we are having with them, Moniepoint is going to be exposing us to millions of businesses on your platform. All our money is going into offices, having offices everywhere, not a partner.
Our own is that wherever the shipment is, we will be able to process it. So our major investment is offices. So we are not the guys that are just using API to connect you, no. We are doing it directly. And then we also have an API for you to integrate with us. So we know that we cannot jump into satisfying 40 million businesses at once. It’s not possible.
But we know that what we have built is just a matter of time. When Terminal Africa wanted to partner with us. They asked us a question: what’s the limit to what you can process? And we told them that you bring the limit first. You bring the volume. Bring the volume first ttry us.
Then we can now know where our limit broke. But for now, we don’t see us breaking limits. You bring it first. Let’s see. So that is how we are so prepared. Like I told you, we shut down for 18 months. And a lot of things happened in that 18 months. 12 hours of work every day for 18 months straight. A lot of work was done in those 18 months.
According to statistics online, there are about 40 million businesses every day that use either DHL or GIG or Motorpark or any other means. A business must ship something.
How has AI impacted your industry and your brand?
We are currently not using any AI at the moment. Because we have our own internal system to know how to find addresses better. So I’ll give you one of the breakthroughs we had in our logistic system. At InstaJob, we don’t use Google Maps. Because it is not comprehensive enough for a country like Nigeria.
So we need to develop our own addressing system from scratch, which is more effective than Google Maps. That eliminates mistakes people normally make in their addresses. It stopped when we terminated the use of Google Maps and we’re using our own map system.
Then another thing we do is that we monitor our staff. We monitor them extremely. If you leave the office, we know. If you leave the office without permission, we know. Yes, nobody supervises you anyway. So every millimeter of their movement during working hours is monitored. We don’t want a situation where somebody comes to the office and says, I can’t find anybody. We’ll know when you left.
So this has put caution in our employees to say look there’s no way I’m going, these people will know. If you want to leave you take permission because if you don’t they will know so why trying to be smart? We didn’t achieve all of this with AI in our system.
Joshua Igba, if you have created your own addressing system that is accurate, why can’t you make it public so that other people will start making use of it?
When we tell investors this thing, they just look and say, ah, ah. They just look at you, what are you saying? You have done so much that you look like you are capping. So what I would say as regards adoption is that we are very small. Yeah, we are very small. That’s why we are hoping that we’ll get the much visibility that we need. And people will adopt us more. And people will realize that you can’t enter a wrong address if you are using us.
Because it will show you your neighborhood and everything. I believe that with more adoption, people will just realize that anything logistics, we should just probably stop using Google Maps. And that’s one of the things that have slowed down our integration with TopShip and Sendbox. These guys use Google Maps.
And we said, look, we can’t use Google Maps. We can’t use Google Maps. It will just cause chaos. Are you guys willing to use the way we are using our address? So it’s an issue. They are struggling to accept these small boys. They are funded. We are not funded. So it’s hard for them to accept the reality that anything Google Maps is an accident. So we can slow down integration because they are actually at the crossroads of switching to InstaDrop.
But they are afraid that we are small and we are really reliable. Why should they switch their system because of us? So we are just telling them that we cannot use Google Maps if that’s what will make you guys not switch to us. Because what will happen is if the address is not entered correctly our staff make mistakes. How do I start explaining it?
So I told them for efficiency’s sake, our address system is more reliable than Google Maps. So these are issues, but hopefully, by the time the people start seeing our media visibility, they will accept us more.
Joshua Igba, what are your plans for the future?
Our immediate plan is to have six more partnerships. Then we can start having offices in a hundred more cities. So that people can experience speed. You go on all these platforms, you see them, three to five days. I don’t understand. Three to five days just to buy something. Why can’t I buy it today and get it tomorrow? So we want more cities to enjoy the 20 hours speed.
Our plans are one, partnerships, two, expansion into more cities for more people to enjoy our services. We are resolute that we will try as much as possible to be able to achieve this expansion even if we don’t get funded. And we just make sure that we are doing enough numbers to ensure we are able to rent places we need to rent for us to just keep expanding and extending our net.
We are hoping to eliminate our budget for marketing with partnerships. Like I said, if we finalize our partnership with Moniepoint. Moniepoint can expose us to 2 million businesses in their newsletters, in their app, social media, they can do content with us and expose us to potential 2 million businesses.
We partner here and there. Our marketing budget will be cut off so that we can focus on just having presences back to back, city to city, and orchestrating the fastest shipment ever in Nigeria.
What advice would you give to other Africans starting their business?
My advice to young people is that ideas do not rule the world. What rules the world is cash, relationship, and politics. For you to solve the problem of your cash as a potential tech founder, whatever ideas that you have, pocket it. Go and work. Go and gather money. Pocket that idea. Go and work.
Go and gather money because many ideas fail, not because they were bad ideas, but just because the founder could not access a few millions to execute it. So you end up suffering unnecessarily. Those times you are using to suffer in your entrepreneurship, you could have been using it to work in another company and be saving up for execution. So ideas, ideas rule the world is a lie. Cash rules the world.
You can access cash by working to build other people’s dreams and saving up for a time that you can now build your own dream. And then if cash is your problem in building as a tech founder, one of the ways to eliminate that cash is learn how to code yourself. Learn how to code yourself. As much as Techpoint and Tech Africa, whatever, celebrates people who are raising funding, for every one founder that raises funding, one million is suffering.
It’s not like there’s a formula to getting funding. It’s just still somehow the grace of God. Then relationships. Relationships would go a long way to help you achieve things that are beyond your power. Things that cash cannot buy. One of the best ways to close partnerships is true relationships.
Everybody can develop a proposal, but you have an edge if you know somebody inside. Then the other thing is politics. So these are the three things that rule the world. So anything a founder is building, what is the politics around that industry?
People who are doing Fintech, they always wake up with a high blood pressure machine beside them on the bed. Because you can wake up and then you just see on TechPoint that the government has done so so policy.
For me, by that COVID, COVID just exposed me that, oh, logistics is a sector that always humbled the government. They can’t do anything about it. So it’s something that cannot be strangled.
I just told myself that, look, just be where you are shielded away from erratic government policy. So people should be very mindful of the politics and policies around the sector they want to play in. Because for no fault of yours, your project can end because of policies. It should just end with your BSC and MBA.
The project will just fail. And you just act from square one, just because of policy. So somebody should not wake up and say, “I have an idea” and you’re running to execute.
Where can we learn more about Joshua Igba and InstaDrop?
Click to read part two of this interview with Joshua Igba.
Watch Joshua Igba’s interview here.
