By: AYORINDE AJAYI
A lot has been written about the clusters of tech startups in Nigeria that solve localized problems in many verticals. And these narratives have shed light on many amazing founders with superpowers for running profitable ventures.
However, little has been written about their pricing model, which greatly affects adoption rates, despite the fact that we are in the middle of a tech boom in Nigeria.
In this article, you will learn the importance of localizing your B2B SaaS startup for growth, excerpt from Ibrahim Bashir’s interviews:
Ibrahim Bashir is one of the vibrant founders we have around providing mobile-first digital tools for small businesses using cloud technology.
He founded Dillali, a B2B startup providing SMEs with an all-in-one platform for invoicing, customer receipts, and business bookkeeping. Being an entrepreneur working for small business owners, he discovered that many invoicing solutions we had back then were designed for the American market and not so mobile-friendly.
“Aside from the rich features of Dillali, its pricing tier makes it affordable for African businesses to key into its subscription model. Dillali and some other B2B startups in Nigeria have engineered a pricing strategy based on monthly subscriptions. A perfect definition of a localized solution for the African market.”
In addition to considering an affordable and flexible subscription model for your startup, Ibrahim is aware of other problems in the market, such as customer trust, customer education, and brand visibility.
How is Ibrahim able to weather these problems to achieve its current 15,000+ user base? According to him, Dillali has a free basic plan that caters to upstart businesses that usually struggle at the beginning to build a cash flow.
Ibrahim also mentioned that everything takes time and that you have to put in the effort to get the best results.
If you plan to run a B2B SaaS startup targeting the African market, there are loads of tweaks that are required to truly build a localized business with good traction to scale your product for investment.
In conclusion, building and growing an investible B2B startup required 10 times more hard work than B2C startups in the fintech vertical, where customers pay a fraction per transaction.
If you are planning to scale your B2B startup through investor funds, there are many accelerator programs and investment vehicles around the world that focus on investing in promising SaaS startups. One of them is the Startup Wise Guys accelerator program for African startups.
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