From $50K to $120M: How an Indian Entrepreneur Unlocked Ghana’s Invisible Economy

Hey Global Ghanaian citizens, Adrian here from the Sound of Accra Podcast.

2

00:00:03,698 --> 00:00:11,351

This is the show where we showcase global Ghanaian excellence to the world by spotlighting

top businesses, leaders, and creators.

3

00:00:11,351 --> 00:00:12,271

Alright.

4

00:00:12,351 --> 00:00:18,873

Now in today's episode, we're going to talk about a man from India who's crossed the

oceans to find the next big thing.

5

00:00:18,873 --> 00:00:24,785

And he managed to do that by turning $50,000 into $120 million.

6

00:00:24,785 --> 00:00:26,001

Imagine that.

7

00:00:26,001 --> 00:00:27,752

Alright, so picture this.

8

00:00:27,752 --> 00:00:32,616

Maybe you're somewhere in Spintex, maybe you're somewhere in Tema, Kumasi.

9

00:00:32,616 --> 00:00:35,478

She got shelves stacked floor to ceiling.

10

00:00:35,478 --> 00:00:44,504

You'll find Milo, you'll find blue bands, you'll find the Frytol, Cowbell, Indomie, all of

these types of products that that we all know and respect.

11

00:00:44,504 --> 00:00:49,227

And the owner already knows what you usually buy before you've even opened your mouth.

12

00:00:49,227 --> 00:00:50,638

That's the relationship that you got.

13

00:00:50,638 --> 00:00:51,389

Okay.

14

00:00:51,389 --> 00:00:55,023

And she's been doing for maybe fifteen, twenty years, has real

15

00:00:55,023 --> 00:01:05,864

loyal customers right but here's the thing to the global digital world she basically does

not exist she's completely invisible okay but of course in the physical world she's very

16

00:01:05,864 --> 00:01:18,185

well known in her area some that some kind of local champion now that gap between what's

really going on the ground and what's actually happening in terms of what the world can

17

00:01:18,185 --> 00:01:21,948

see is the exact gap that this one man from India

18

00:01:22,238 --> 00:01:33,223

cross the oceans to find and he's just turned it into a global gold mine a hundred and

twenty million dollars let's get into this because this is a really interesting episode

19

00:01:33,223 --> 00:01:48,399

okay so you guys should meet deepak Rustagi okay so he's an entrepreneur from India and

how this business launched is that he was doing research on business in Nigeria okay so he

20

00:01:48,399 --> 00:01:51,528

came to Nigeria he wanted to understand the market

21

00:01:51,528 --> 00:01:57,893

He goes online and he searches for businesses in Lagos and Lagos, Nigeria.

22

00:01:57,893 --> 00:01:59,453

And guess what happens?

23

00:01:59,453 --> 00:02:05,818

In Lagos, Nigeria, there are over 20 million people in the city.

24

00:02:05,818 --> 00:02:06,819

Okay?

25

00:02:06,859 --> 00:02:11,062

And one of the biggest commercial cities on the entire continent is Lagos.

26

00:02:11,062 --> 00:02:13,264

It's the economic heartbeat of West Africa.

27

00:02:13,264 --> 00:02:14,164

Everyone knows this.

28

00:02:14,164 --> 00:02:14,965

Okay?

29

00:02:14,965 --> 00:02:18,976

Now, where the light bulb moment came for Deepankar is that.

30

00:02:18,976 --> 00:02:30,364

Google would always redirect him to Lagos Portugal instead of Lagos Nigeria because by

default, a lot more online businesses exist in Portugal than Nigeria, because Portugal is

31

00:02:30,364 --> 00:02:32,245

a big tech hub in the in Europe.

32

00:02:32,245 --> 00:02:33,145

Okay.

33

00:02:33,466 --> 00:02:36,798

Now imagine that Lagos Portugal instead of Lagos Nigeria.

34

00:02:36,798 --> 00:02:39,540

I mean, who would know that there was even a Lagos over there?

35

00:02:39,540 --> 00:02:40,291

Okay.

36

00:02:40,291 --> 00:02:47,914

Now look, I know this may sound like a small thing, it may sound some like some kind of

quirk, a tech glitch.

37

00:02:47,914 --> 00:02:50,886

But just take that in what that means for a moment.

38

00:02:50,927 --> 00:03:02,406

It means that millions of small businesses, kiosk owners provision stores, open market

traders, wholesale buyers, all of them moving goods, serving communities, creating

39

00:03:02,406 --> 00:03:07,800

livelihoods every single day are completely invisible to the digital world.

40

00:03:07,800 --> 00:03:11,943

I mean, no data, no profile, no trace.

41

00:03:12,044 --> 00:03:14,305

Deepankar said it himself.

42

00:03:14,305 --> 00:03:17,970

You had millions of businesses operating daily.

43

00:03:17,970 --> 00:03:28,783

employing huge numbers of people but there was almost no structured digital data around

them right these businesses were effectively invisible to the online world and me and you

44

00:03:28,783 --> 00:03:39,996

know this you right by being in Ghana or even other African countries as well in West

Africa but here's what gets me Deepankar didn't just see that walk away he said to himself

45

00:03:39,996 --> 00:03:46,068

this market isn't ready or these people haven't even been digitized yet come back in 10

years

46

00:03:46,068 --> 00:03:48,320

He said, I'm going to solve this problem.

47

00:03:48,320 --> 00:03:49,450

That's what he said.

48

00:03:49,450 --> 00:03:55,034

That's the drive that Deepankar had to see a gap and run towards it rather than run away

from it.

49

00:03:55,034 --> 00:03:57,916

And that's exactly where everything started.

50

00:03:57,956 --> 00:04:00,718

So let's tell you more about who Deepankar is.

51

00:04:00,718 --> 00:04:01,619

Okay.

52

00:04:01,619 --> 00:04:09,634

So in terms of Deepankar um, he De Punk Rastagi is not someone who landed in Africa with a

big check and the hero complex.

53

00:04:09,634 --> 00:04:10,065

Okay.

54

00:04:10,065 --> 00:04:14,750

So he came to Africa and he wanted to work, he wanted to learn.

55

00:04:14,750 --> 00:04:16,861

He wanted to earn his stripes.

56

00:04:16,942 --> 00:04:22,827

He spent years in software, in consulting, and also in the FMCG sector.

57

00:04:22,827 --> 00:04:27,530

So FMCG, for anyone that doesn't understand, that stands for fast moving consumer goods.

58

00:04:27,530 --> 00:04:27,991

Okay.

59

00:04:27,991 --> 00:04:33,115

Um, including time with the Toleram group as well.

60

00:04:33,115 --> 00:04:35,056

He also worked with those people as well.

61

00:04:35,056 --> 00:04:44,628

So Toleram is the company behind Indomie Okay, the ones your mom may have bought you as a

treat when you're younger, the ones that people still buy today, right.

62

00:04:44,628 --> 00:04:50,891

He was inside that world watching how goods move from manufacturer to distributor to shop

to your hands.

63

00:04:50,891 --> 00:04:52,031

That whole food chain.

64

00:04:52,031 --> 00:04:52,732

Okay.

65

00:04:52,732 --> 00:04:56,574

He felt the friction and he understood the layers of what was going on.

66

00:04:56,574 --> 00:05:00,717

Prior to this, Tipunka also built something called We Connect.

67

00:05:00,717 --> 00:05:08,100

It's a local search engine and it was designed specifically to help small businesses in

Africa become digitally discoverable.

68

00:05:08,100 --> 00:05:10,573

He was already solving the visibility problem.

69

00:05:10,573 --> 00:05:13,194

Before Omnibiz even became an idea.

70

00:05:13,194 --> 00:05:22,598

So when he finally launched Omnibiz in 2019, right, he was building from a deep place of

observation and experience.

71

00:05:22,598 --> 00:05:23,279

Okay.

72

00:05:23,279 --> 00:05:26,300

And that's an important detail, right?

73

00:05:26,300 --> 00:05:29,542

The best businesses aren't built on inspiration alone.

74

00:05:29,542 --> 00:05:30,522

Okay.

75

00:05:30,522 --> 00:05:35,385

They are built from all of these important things.

76

00:05:35,385 --> 00:05:36,847

They are built from watching.

77

00:05:36,847 --> 00:05:43,462

Years and years and years observing the market, understanding what's happening, and using

those insights to dictate where the business should go.

78

00:05:43,462 --> 00:05:46,043

And that's exactly what Deepankar did.

79

00:05:46,524 --> 00:05:50,196

Now, West Africa's informal trade economy is massive.

80

00:05:50,196 --> 00:05:59,831

Okay, we're not just talking about a side hustle or an asterisk in the GDP, we're talking

about the backbone of how goods move from where they're made to where they're needed.

81

00:05:59,831 --> 00:06:02,787

The kiosk owners, the provision shop aunties.

82

00:06:02,787 --> 00:06:08,517

The open market traders loading up at Makola market or Kumasi Central before the sun is

even up.

83

00:06:08,517 --> 00:06:16,907

You know, the the cold store operators, the wholesale buyers who knew every distributor in

the in the city by first name.

84

00:06:16,907 --> 00:06:22,110

These people employ millions, they serve millions, they keep communities running.

85

00:06:22,110 --> 00:06:24,112

But the systems, right?

86

00:06:24,112 --> 00:06:29,335

The systems that are around them completely fragmented.

87

00:06:29,637 --> 00:06:32,482

A retainer needs to restock, she calls it.

88

00:06:32,482 --> 00:06:43,116

distributor who calls another distributor who maybe checks with somebody else okay nobody

knows exactly what's in stock you know and I've seen this happen right prices can may

89

00:06:43,116 --> 00:06:53,390

shift depending on who you know and who likes you that day you know that's kind of how the

market works okay especially in West Africa access to credit forget it because the banks

90

00:06:53,390 --> 00:07:00,476

can't even see your transaction history okay and some of these people aren't even banked

right you're invisible

91

00:07:00,476 --> 00:07:02,817

These people are invisible, okay.

92

00:07:02,817 --> 00:07:15,644

Now, what Omnibiz built is a platform that connects those retailers directly okay to

manufacturers and distributors through digital ordering, real-time stock visibility,

93

00:07:15,644 --> 00:07:19,145

embedded finance tools, and logistics.

94

00:07:19,145 --> 00:07:26,308

Okay, call logistics coordination through dozens of delivery partners and so on and so

forth.

95

00:07:26,408 --> 00:07:28,877

Now they operate in Ghana.

96

00:07:29,086 --> 00:07:36,430

As well as Ivory Coast, our Ghanaian neighbors, and Nigeria as well, of course, okay,

which is the biggest West African economy.

97

00:07:36,430 --> 00:07:39,211

Okay, working with more than 200 brands.

98

00:07:39,211 --> 00:07:41,232

Okay, so a lot of brands you can see.

99

00:07:41,232 --> 00:07:49,857

You know, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see some of the brands Unilever, Colgate

Indomie Kellogg's, Kimberly Clark, Nestlé, Seven Up, Arla.

100

00:07:49,857 --> 00:07:51,627

You know, the list goes on and on and on and on.

101

00:07:51,627 --> 00:07:54,409

You can check this out, you know, on their website.

102

00:07:54,409 --> 00:07:56,320

I'll leave a link in the description below.

103

00:07:56,320 --> 00:07:59,221

But here is the line that I keep coming back to.

104

00:07:59,273 --> 00:08:04,837

Deepankar said we are a data company, We're not a logistics company.

105

00:08:05,618 --> 00:08:16,173

And think of Uber, think of Airbnb, think of you know Bolt think of some of these

platforms that don't own the actual infrastructure, they just own the audience or they own

106

00:08:16,173 --> 00:08:16,864

the data.

107

00:08:16,864 --> 00:08:20,987

This is exactly the same model that Deepankar has used for his business.

108

00:08:20,987 --> 00:08:29,460

Him and his team made a deliberate decision not to build what already exists because the

problem was never that there was never enough trucks or the trucks were being used.

109

00:08:29,601 --> 00:08:33,142

You know, the the problem was that there was never enough trucks.

110

00:08:33,142 --> 00:08:40,325

The problem was that the trucks weren't being used officially, the problem was that you

know nobody was coordinating the information.

111

00:08:40,805 --> 00:08:50,149

He wants Omnibiz to be the backbone of African trade, not the DHL of Africa, the nervous

system, the connective tissue underneath.

112

00:08:50,149 --> 00:08:51,771

The economy we already have.

113

00:08:51,771 --> 00:08:56,294

Understanding where this business sits the market is really really really important.

114

00:08:56,654 --> 00:09:00,417

Now let me give you the numbers because they deserve to be said out loud.

115

00:09:00,417 --> 00:09:05,260

Deepankar started with $50,000 he earned from support from family and friends.

116

00:09:05,260 --> 00:09:08,533

So he had some initial seed money from people that he loved.

117

00:09:08,533 --> 00:09:12,775

He built an early operating pool of about $300,000 from that.

118

00:09:12,837 --> 00:09:15,260

So he raised some angel funds.

119

00:09:15,260 --> 00:09:18,871

He then stayed bootstrapped through the COVID period.

120

00:09:19,031 --> 00:09:23,172

If you ran any business during the COVID period, you know what that took.

121

00:09:23,172 --> 00:09:23,732

Okay?

122

00:09:23,732 --> 00:09:25,693

That was not an easy period.

123

00:09:25,733 --> 00:09:27,073

And check this out.

124

00:09:27,073 --> 00:09:36,156

His first outside raise, so outside of his network family and friends, his first raise was

$3 million in 2021.

125

00:09:36,316 --> 00:09:40,657

Then he raised $5 million pre-seed Series A.

126

00:09:40,818 --> 00:09:44,639

And then $20 million in Series A.

127

00:09:44,702 --> 00:09:49,616

Total funding about 29 million dollars Deepankar and his team's been able to raise.

128

00:09:49,616 --> 00:09:51,837

Now here's where it gets crazy.

129

00:09:51,978 --> 00:10:02,906

Between 2020 and 2023, Omnibiz revenue grew by and I need you to hear this number properly

because you might think it's a typo.

130

00:10:03,227 --> 00:10:08,190

71,818%.

131

00:10:08,211 --> 00:10:13,459

That's the amount Omnibiz grew between 2020 and 2023.

132

00:10:13,459 --> 00:10:20,342

That's an interesting period because that is also the period that marks the beginning of

COVID and more or less the end of COVID.

133

00:10:20,342 --> 00:10:29,366

Okay, yes, COVID still exists, but in terms of it being, you know, in people's ears and in

the mainstream, that's pretty much where it kind of disappeared.

134

00:10:29,767 --> 00:10:38,010

From $280,000 to over 120 million, Deepankar has done a fantastic job him and his team.

135

00:10:38,290 --> 00:10:40,061

Now by 2024.

136

00:10:40,183 --> 00:10:45,645

Omnibiz platform had already processed over 1.3 trillion naira in transactions.

137

00:10:45,645 --> 00:10:47,935

That's roughly about $110 million.

138

00:10:47,935 --> 00:10:57,488

Okay, 150,000 retailers, 5,800 distributors, all connected through one platform.

139

00:10:57,688 --> 00:10:59,308

Ghana is in that network.

140

00:10:59,308 --> 00:11:01,629

This is all happening in our ecosystem.

141

00:11:02,309 --> 00:11:06,430

And the company reached net profitability in 2024.

142

00:11:06,690 --> 00:11:09,625

Asset light, lean, built-in data.

143

00:11:09,625 --> 00:11:14,836

Not owning things, only seeing things clearly, and that's where the business came from.

144

00:11:15,017 --> 00:11:15,897

Right?

145

00:11:15,917 --> 00:11:18,478

So Global Ghanaian Citizens, there you have it.

146

00:11:18,478 --> 00:11:29,721

This isn't just a startup story, this is a story about what happens when someone comes to

your city, your market, your neighborhood, your street, and sees what you stop seeing.

147

00:11:29,721 --> 00:11:35,142

When you grow somewhere and when you're deep inside something, you stop noticing the gaps.

148

00:11:35,142 --> 00:11:37,074

Okay, it's so easy

149

00:11:37,074 --> 00:11:43,590

to get familiar with your surroundings and to not see what you're not seeing, to be

blinded by certain gaps.

150

00:11:43,590 --> 00:11:49,495

But when someone new comes into your environment, they may see blind spots that you may

not see.

151

00:11:49,495 --> 00:11:52,747

and this can happen in life for sure.

152

00:11:53,148 --> 00:11:58,351

The provision shop has always worked the way it's worked, the market has always been the

market, and that's just how it is.

153

00:11:58,351 --> 00:11:59,512

We accept it, okay?

154

00:11:59,512 --> 00:12:01,533

But Deepankar right?

155

00:12:01,533 --> 00:12:04,299

A foreigner came into Nigeria.

156

00:12:04,299 --> 00:12:14,722

He then searched for Lagos, kept getting redirected to Lagos, Portugal, and thought, hmm,

this is the opportunity, rather than thinking this place isn't ready.

157

00:12:14,982 --> 00:12:20,523

So the question is, what are we still walking past that we aren't seeing, that our eyes

aren't capturing?

158

00:12:20,523 --> 00:12:31,846

What is the everyday thing in our economy, in our culture, in our neighbourhood that we've

accepted as it is, but that someone looking with fresh eyes would immediately see as an

159

00:12:31,846 --> 00:12:32,926

opportunity?

160

00:12:33,834 --> 00:12:43,549

Because the the informal economy is ours, the market women are ours, the kiosk owners are

ours, that grinding daily hustle of trade that starts before the rest of the world is

161

00:12:43,549 --> 00:12:45,249

awake, that is all ours.

162

00:12:45,249 --> 00:12:48,671

That all belongs to us in West Africa, in Ghana.

163

00:12:48,671 --> 00:12:55,593

The lesson from Deepankar is that not to sit back and wait for someone from outside to

come and unlock it.

164

00:12:55,593 --> 00:13:02,050

The lesson here is to look again, to look properly, to look at what you know like you've

never seen it.

165

00:13:04,448 --> 00:13:08,149

Because someone is going to build the digital backbone of West African trade.

166

00:13:08,149 --> 00:13:11,690

And based on the story, the work has already begun.

167

00:13:12,370 --> 00:13:14,701

So that's it for today, Global Ghanaian Citizens.

168

00:13:14,701 --> 00:13:17,852

If you made it to the end of this episode, thank you very much for listening.

169

00:13:17,852 --> 00:13:24,250

Leave a comment if you're watching on YouTube and just drop the drop the word Omnibiz if

you got to the end of this episode.

170

00:13:24,250 --> 00:13:27,074

I would really love to know who listened all the way through.

171

00:13:27,074 --> 00:13:33,416

If I'm listening on audio podcasts, you know, drop comment our website, drop us a voice

note, let me know what you think of the episode.

172

00:13:33,483 --> 00:13:43,086

if this episode made you think, share it with a friend, colleague, or family member who's

thinking about starting a business in Africa or for Africa.

173

00:13:43,170 --> 00:13:47,282

or pass it on to an existing entrepreneur that you know to inspire.

174

00:13:47,423 --> 00:13:48,994

The economy was always there.

175

00:13:48,994 --> 00:13:51,325

We just needed someone to see it.

176

00:13:51,566 --> 00:13:54,537

I've been Adrian Daniels, this is Sound of Accra Podcast.

177

00:13:54,537 --> 00:14:00,852

Until next time, keep watching, keep building, take care, God bless, and I'll catch you in

the next one.

178

00:14:00,852 --> 00:14:01,653

Thank you.