Having a Nigerian create your road map offers some special benefits. A critical factor in assessing an app’s effectiveness is the concept of specificity. The objective of Lara.ng was to be there for Nigerians when they needed a route map. Even the audience it was designed for seems to have nearly forgotten about the platform nine years later.
The sorry story of Lara is just another story of how local startups fail to compete effectively with foreign incumbents in Nigeria.
When you consider the patterns behind emerging platforms in the country, and you look at their level of staying power, you begin to see a trend –they fail to convince massive adoption.
Following the collection of organized data on transit routes, bus stops, and local transportation rates the previous year, Samuel Odeloye, Nnamdi Nwanze, and Ladi Ojora launched Lara.ng in 2014. The automap on Lara.ng is unique. Because of its user-friendly interface, people got the impression that it was built in Nigeria for Nigerians.
For daily drivers navigating the streets of Lagos, Lara.ng was developed as a fun site. Lara.ng is a software platform that caters to genuine Lagosians—the Danfo drivers, bike climbers, and even Uber drivers—rather than merely being a site that advises you which way to drive.
Lara is meant to be that wonderful companion who drives Nigerians to their destinations. The excellent helper on the site gives customers a bird’s-eye view of Nigeria. To receive clear and concise instructions, visitors only had to open the page and follow the interactive session.
Users of Lara.ng can communicate with an assistant and get directions to a location using an interface modeled after WhatsApp. When one is stuck and needs directions, one can always get in touch with Lara. She is like a girlfriend with a thorough understanding of the neighborhood.
What has happened to Nigerians’ probably best road map, then? Lara ought to be discussing growth at this moment. Sadly, expansion is not possible right now because very few people are using the platform.
Many Nigerians believe Google Maps to be the greatest map application available to them. The fact that it comes preloaded on the majority of Android smartphones is a major contributing factor to the belief. Except for its minor popularity in Lagos and Abuja, Nigerians are still unaware of the Lara.ng. same folks that require the service regularly.
Except for the $25,000 Facebook FBStart award it got in 2018, Lara has always been self-funded since it first went online. The startup’s CEO had expressed dissatisfaction in 2018 over the lack of firm commitments from investors despite many conversations. For entrepreneurs aiming to scale, this is seldom a favorable experience because they can hardly avoid going bankrupt.
Africa and Nigeria in particular remain a good market for the sale of mobile apps given its growing young population. However, the same attention is never given to local apps in and outside the country and region in general. Lara.ng is a Nigerian platform built to solve real, localized problems.
Local developers in Nigeria, meanwhile, must contend with severe realities. One such fact is how challenging it is to compete with established foreign apps. Although Samuel Odeloye, Nnamdi Nwanze, and Ladi Ojora created a platform that is interactive, data-efficient, and useful for Nigeria’s culture, they have yet to experience any expansion.
