BILLYON: FOURTH ANNIVASARY (the Journey so far).
Billyon ltd marks its 4th anniversary on the 17th of July. We have augmented from a vague idea to a clearer vision. Indeed if you don’t go, you won’t know the past four years have taught us a lot of business, partnership, marketing, employment, and leadership lessons, among the enormous amount of other lessons we have learned, and we keep learning every day.
The journey started with an outstanding unique logistics solution (idea), where all delivery riders but businesses and individuals will register and be a part of the Uber-like delivery application. Users would download the app to find a rider around them and request delivery to their desired destination, the high population of riders that would be registered on the app is the beauty behind the brand name BILLYON LOGISTICS (a place to find BILLION riders who are ready to respond smartly and timely to billion deliveries)
We couldn’t keep up; that is the truth. The building of the mobile application, gathering data, networking with online vendors, branding, marketing, and setting up a team was overwhelming; the minor capital needed at that point was not less than ₦5,000,000; it seemed impossible to gather at that point, ok! We don’t give up here; what options do we have? Let’s start slight, let’s begin with reaching out to local vendors and start using public transport to deliver to their customers for them, waw! That’s nice; we started like that and kept pushing, creating savings accounts solely to withdraw when the money is enough to buy a bike, so one employee can come on board; big shout out to all our customers then; they were very much aware that our services cost more and costumes much time than existing competitors in the market. Still, they kept paying because of the trust and competent method we had; there wasn’t any delay, denial or loss of item to any of the businesses we worked with at that time (2018- 2020). Shout out to HALO STORE a gadget sales brand in Ikeja, CRUSTY CAKES, a cakes and pastries brand at Ikorodu, BHIZ AFFORDABLE, an importation brand in Ibadan, LADY LARA, an online lingerie vendor, C.E.O of Tummy also fill a pastry brand, ABUTWINS SOFT SKILLS.
The founders of these brands are the real MVPs; they made Billyon continue to grow, it is crazy how most of them never met me until 2021, but we have done business worth hundreds of thousands; once again, THANK YOU, your companies will continue to thrive.
After all of this, the picture seems to be coming into the limelight, lol, not at all, there. I went about a change of environment in 2019, which appeared to be another opportunity to scale and expand into dealing with more businesses. No, the change brought about a reason to slow down the company. The savings weren’t substantial anymore, and neither could we attend to the number of orders we used to treat too; damn, I was getting tired also, bored, lost, confused, and frustrated. I considered dropping out of school all my life during those days, and I wanted just to hit the street hard; I knew if I had continued to move at that pace, success would be more attainable because all of the odds on the ground, while it all started, was against me.
Orders kept coming, but our service quality was low; we were already rejecting a lot of demands and spending the savings on keeping up; I made many mistakes during this period and couldn’t focus on any of my engagements. My mind was always busy looking for my oasis, and I tried many things. I have been into Robotics for more than five years; at that time, I joined different tutoring brands to educate people about AI and Robotics technology, tried to secure a partnership deal with Aramex Nigeria, and after many partnerships with bike owners and logistics businesses, I was looking into the higher level of delivery service, all of this was a rollercoaster until 2021.
2022 marks the beginning of being exposed to investors’ money; this is one of the immense encouragement I have had in a long time; at the same time, my mind feels as if my body isn’t doing enough or nothing at all; I began to believe I was
