Piggybank Now Known As Piggy Vest Made An Announcement A Few Days Ago Of Their Acquisition Of A Smaller Competitor And A Wealth Management App, Savi. Ng
The good guys at Piggybank now known as Piggy vest made an announcement a few days ago of their acquisition of a smaller competitor and a wealth management app, Savi. ng owned by Nonso Okpala’s VFD.
While reading through the announcement by Odunayo Eweniyi, the co-founder of the brand whose picture is attached below, something caught my attention that made my ear tingle.
In 2020, Piggybank disbursed over 90 billion naira to their customers that were saved with them.
Just this year alone, they have done more than 90 billion naira in disbursement and this is just July.
Piggy vest’s business model is simple to understand: when you save with them, they invest your money saved in an asset class like treasury bills, bonds, mutual funds and fixed income deposits, then pay you back 6% at the maturity of your savings, 7% If you did Fixed deposit, the company keeps the rest of the income earned from trading with your money as their profit.
Amazing right?
I raised my shoulder for the amazing young people running the business and this is why.
The 6 founders are pretty young, the oldest just clocked 30 this year, the rest are in their twenties.
But their age belies their ambition, they are doing what some tier 3 banks in Nigeria with the proper structure are not able to do.
To have a platform where Millenials and Generation z could save 90 billion naira in one year is not a mean feat, it is a feat only legends could pull off.
I also remembered while reading the blog that Piggyvest is an idea that started as a joke on Twitter, let me explain:
in December 2015, the co-founders of Piggyvest who met while they were at Covenant university came across a tweet from a lady, about how she had saved N365,000 by putting N1000 in a wooden piggy bank daily. They decided then, that finding a way to digitize the concept would help salary earners save towards their financial goals and that was how the business Piggyvest was born.
They launched Piggyvest on the 7th of January 2016, as a ‘savings only platform, and the fully tested version was ready for public use by April 2016. Gradually, the brand grew with user recommendations and testimonials. These free adverts including this one I’m writing were a testament to the team, that they were helping with a real need in our society.
Nigerians are very sceptical when it comes to online investment and savings but it is not their fault, we have seen, again and again, stories of people losing their hard earn savings to scammers online, glorified yahoo yahoo boys running Ponzi schemes in the name of investment so Nigerians are wary of putting or saving their money on anything online investment.
It is then a big deal that Odunayo Eweniyi and her team of co-founders have been able to change this perception and narrative, one person at a time and this makes their story for me more remarkable and inspiring.
The biggest lesson for me is this, if you want to start an online investment/savings business, once your business is structured and properly run by professionals, people will give you their money, then go and sleep without any care in this world, because they know that their money is safe in your hand and working for them.
Running a structured business and being accountable is the only way to earn trust for Nigerians to trust you with their money.
You don’t earn trust by going to church or using God’s name to deceive the gullible
The Pigggvest’s team are showing Nigerians with their resilience and beautiful story what young people are capable of doing.
There is no shortage of young entrepreneurs in Nigeria, no shortage of drive or ambition.
Young people here are succeeding despite this government and not because of it.
