How Jide Ayegbusi grabbed opportunity in African education

Jide Ayegbusi is the founder of Edusko Africa, a start-up business that connects parents and students with good and affordable private schools across Africa. The organisation also assists parents in making informed choices on their wards’ education ranging from elementary to tertiary institutions.

Lack of adequate information in the country’s educational sector for parents inspired Jide to establish Edusko in 2015. “There is limited information about the schools and parents have had to make this important decision on hearsay, shallow neighbour referrals and Google search,” Jide said.

“With over 80,000 private schools in the country, it is very difficult for parents to make the choice of the right school for their children,” the young entrepreneur stated.

Jide started his business in 2015 with N500, 000 which he got from his personal savings.

According to him, the business started generating revenue after the first six months of its establishment, stating that the business has grown tremendously owing to the highly motivated team he works with.

The psychology graduate said that the major challenge confronting his business is getting schools to share their information with him.

He stated that all that is fast changing now as Edusko is getting a lot of referral from schools that are already on board with them. “At the moment, we have listed about 4,000 schools and more than 5,000 parents have directly been referred to our partner schools. We are currently in over 30 states in Nigeria and over 10 regions in Ghana,” Jide added.

Funding is another major challenge Jide said has limited his business expansion plans.

“Funding was also a major challenge. Edusko was bootstrapped with a very lean budget and this affected our scaling speed,” he said.

Jide urged the government to improve the country’s ease of doing business so that businesses, especially start-ups, can be profitable, adding that Nigeria ought to have a better business environment than South-Africa because of its population and large economic size.

The psychologist-turned- entrepreneur called on the government to grant tax incentives to small businesses and provide adequate financing to increase their survival rate. “Start-ups should also be given enough tax holidays, maybe 10 years, so that they are able to grow without any hindrance,” he said.

Jide said that Africa’s educational technology market is currently worth about $16 billion and expected to grow by 21 percent. He told Start-Up Digest that his organisation is working on improving its value proposition to clearly differentiate itself and tap from the vast potential in the Educational tech market in Africa.

As a result, Jide said that the company has continued to remain in business despite coming on board when the country recorded recession, stressing that Edusko remains the only player in the industry known by parents to have built an unbiased platform.

He said that the educational sector is very crucial in Nigeria’s quest for diversification, stating that the country should invest 26percent of its annual budget to the sector as recommended by the United Nation Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to diversify the economy, stressing that the place of education can never be ignored.

“We have data of some of the finest schools across the globe. We have reached out to many of these schools and we have not been turned down because they could see value in what we are offering them,” he said.

“Many of these schools have been profiled on Edusko already. We are also reviewing some of the proposals we have received from the schools that have reached out to partner with us for students recruitment in Nigeria,” he added.

When asked about his advice to other entrepreneurs, Jide said that entrepreneurship is not about starting a business and making profit but about solving problems.

He said every entrepreneur should always think of solutions to problems they have identified in their society and work with a quality team to achieve objectives.

“Entrepreneurship, for me, is not just about starting a business and making money, it’s about problem-solving. Opportunities for business success abound where there are many problems to be solved like we have in Africa.

“Think of a solution to one of these problems that are worth solving and solve it. I also think that business success depends on the quality of the team building it. So it’s advisable to find individuals who share your passion and have necessary skills to help you fill the gaps,” Jide said.

He told Start-Up Digest that he plans to make over 20,000 private schools in the country easily accessible before 2020. He likewise plans to have physical presence in other African countries and ensure his business becomes a household name across Africa.

Josephine Okojie