Tochukwu Nkwocha: Empowering Small Businesses, One Shipment At A Time

 

 

Tochukwu Nkwocha is a software programmer turned entrepreneur with several ventures under his belt. In this interview, he speaks with Exclusive Africa’s Editor, Wale Ameen on his entrepreneurial journey and the Spreaditglobal brand which helps small-scale entrepreneurs ship in products from China.

 

Can we meet you?

My name is Tochukwu Nkwocha. I run a shipping and procurement company called Spreadit Limited and our website is spreaditglobal.com. Yeah, so that’s in a nutshell who I am.

Can you tell us a little about your professional background? What were you up to before Spreadit global was birthed?

Well, I studied physics and astronomy at UNN. After NYSC, I became a software programmer. I programmed for about a year or two and then went into sales for a leading software company called Appzone which is a leading software company today. They’ve just raised about $10 million in investment. So I worked with them for a year before I went into entrepreneurship. Of course, I first went into audiobooks. I had an audiobook business where I created audiobooks for most of the big churches in Nigeria like Winners Chapel, MFM, Assemblies of God Church, and so on.

So I was doing audiobooks but at a point, audiobook became quite a tough business because Nigeria is not so much of a knowledge economy. So it wasn’t possible to continue. I was part of the first recipients of the Tony Elumelu Foundation’s seed fund of $5000 and from there I started SpreadIt in 2018. I registered the company in January 2018 and we started operations in April. So we are three years old now. So, that has been my journey so far.

 

How has the entrepreneurship journey been for you?

Well like I said it’s tough, it’s tough anywhere in the world anyway where you are trying to bring anything to life. It all depends on your persistence and belief in what you are pursuing. So for me its been like what any entrepreneur will face. Yes, we’ll say Nigeria has its peculiarities, people always complain about access to funding, well I didn’t have a problem with access to funding because I was my own investor. I didn’t mention that after audio-books, I started distributing music online and also providing content for several websites abroad. I also distribute ebooks, I still distribute music and e-books today. I manage some of the biggest gospel artists today in Africa, online. So somewhat, the monies we were getting from these sources helped us to drive spreadit before it became profitable. This is because it took us about two years of paying salaries, of pushing and pushing, advertising aggressively before we could break even and we became profitable.

 

So what inspired spreadit?

Well, I also do some speaking. I speak to audiences a lot even though I have slowed down now to focus more on building the business but before this time, I usually have the opportunity to speak to audiences across Nigeria. So I was invited to Aba in 2017, no 2018 January. There’s this programme that is organised by a Pastor in Aba, he reaches out to a lot of people in Aba in January. So I was asked to come and speak to them about opportunities available on the internet for making money. Of course, you know people from the eastern part of the country are known for their Ariaria market where you have to go physically.

The man had heard me speak in Enugu at a ministers’ conference and so he said I should come and speak to his people. So I spoke about different things people can do online and then I spoke about what we now call mini importation from China. How people can do this from anywhere they are and to my amazement, we had about 40 – 50 people who had about N40k to N100k and who were willing to start the business right away. I wasn’t prepared for that and so when I got back to Lagos, we created a Whatsapp group and we started attending to them the much we could. But that was when I knew, again because of my background in software development, I already knew that we needed technology, a platform that could help anybody beyond these people we are helping now to access this same service. So that was what gave birth to the idea of Spreadit. And the word Spreadit is about spreading opportunities. So it’s about spreading the opportunity to as many people as possible so I just called it Spreadit.

So that was how I registered the company in January 2018, and by April we had built what we call in software programming, a minimum viable project which is Spreadit.ng which we started in 2018 and by the end of the first year, we had done close to N50 million in revenue. And so we knew that we were on to something. Today we have made some progress, I think we have about 25, 000 registered users on the platform.

 

Many feel that the idea of mini-importation isn’t an easy one to go into because it’s presumed that you need millions of naira to be involved. Is this true?

Well, it’s not true. That’s why it’s called mini importation. Mini importation is as old as Nigeria. Of course, you know Nigeria is an import economy, and usually when people talk about importation, they are thinking of the likes of Dangote and the the big boys who need billions of naira to bring in container loads and all that.

But the idea of mini importation is that people anywhere because of the internet can now buy goods from Chinese merchants. And so basically, the value we provide is that we provide security of your capital. Because even if you wanted to buy directly from Alibaba.com, which people can buy directly from anywhere in the world, the truth is that you are not sure of whom you are giving your money to. Two, you are not also certain of how your goods will get to you and all that.

So what we have done is to bridge the gap to tell you, listen we have a presence in China, we have an office in China, we have a team in China that handles all orders and procurement and interactions with any supplier in the Chinese language and this ensures that we are getting exactly what the customers are actually looking for because we don’t want people to go through the experience of what I ordered for versus what I got. So we want people to order pieces of stuff and get exactly what they have ordered and make sure that their capital is safe. So that led us to have a physical presence in Lagos state. You can walk into our office and make enquiries and pick up your goods when they arrive.

So, the truth is that you don’t need millions, actually people can start today with N20,000 or even less depending on what exactly you want to go for. Even students. There are many students who use our platform to import and sell things to their course mates in school. They don’t have much money, so N20k, N50k, N100k, depending on how much you have and if you choose the right products which we have done everything quite possible to give you directions on how to go about. Our platform is rich, we have all kinds of content, videos, and reviews of products to help anybody at all from any corner of the globe. Today we are able to ship to 16 African countries from China and that means that we serve customers in Kenya, Botswana, and all kinds of countries, every month and every day.

So you don’t need a lot of money. Just start with what you have and make sure you go for the right products that are cheap and that are lightweight and you are on to international business.

 

What are the actionable steps for anyone wishing to start such a business?

It is a very simple process. We have a website spreaditglobal.com. Just go there and click register or sign up and create your account. Once we confirm your account and it is activated, you are taken right into your dashboard and you can click procurement and shipping and begin to submit your orders. Now there are platforms in China where you can see the details of products you want. You can submit the details to us on your dashboard on our platform.

So the most popular one is the one we call 1688.com. It’s in Chinese but if you are browsing on Google Chrome browser, it can be converted to English language so you can understand what you are seeing and the prices on the platform are the Chinese Yuan or RMB, which today is about N83, N84 per RMB. Naira has been falling for the past several years now. It used to be N50 something but now it’s N84 and its getting worse by the day but then again that platform enables you to access products and have what is called lower minimum order quantity. Because most times when you are trying to buy things from China you will think that you need to order a lot of products but this platform enables you to buy two, three, four pieces of a product and not be looking to buy so many quantity.

So once you decide on the products you want to buy from any of these over 50 platforms, you provide all the details on your account on our website and then we will check the order for correctness and if it is correct, we will immediately approve and begin to process your order. And usually between 15 to 20 working days, you can get your order picked up from our office at Ajao Estate and if you are not in Lagos, we can always way bill to you anywhere you are in Nigeria. So it’s as simple as that and we have videos. Go to our website spreaditglobal.com/videos. You will see both free and paid videos that you can watch to get up to speed.

 

Let me take you on something you mentioned just now. You said a buyer can select as little as two, three copies of an item. How profitable will that be for the buyer? 

Yeah, it is. People are doing it every day. It depends on the kind of product you go for, which is why we created what we call product finder on our website where we x-rayed hundreds of products that are unique and some of which are lightweight. And we emphasize the weight of a product because that is what determines your profitability at the end of the day, especially if you are going for products that are already everywhere in the market, which we don’t recommend. We don’t recommend you go for shoes or products that are everywhere because you will be competing seriously on pricing. Which is not the best thing for you. So we recommend you go for unique products that cannot be easily found in any shop around, which enables you to set your own price and be profitable as well. 

Once the right products are chosen, which are products that are unique, cheaply priced, and products that are also lightweight, once you go for these combination of products, you are definitely going to be a winner over time. And it’s all about discipline to turnover and turnover. So there are products we don’t recommend a newcomer to go into.

We don’t recommend you go into shoes because with shoes, you have to do with a lot of sizes and colors. This means that you need to have deep pockets to be able to handle all the variety of products that you would need to have. Because if somebody comes to you and the person is wearing size 40, when you have only size 43, you’ve lost a customer. And if you are running an advert, that means that that advert money has been wasted, because it brought you a customer that you couldn’t service. So that’s the sort of thing you need to pay attention to and you will be profitable.

 

So what makes Spreaditglobal different? I know there are many other logistics companies around. What’s your unique selling point?

Yeah, like I said, importing is as old as Nigeria and there are many people, maybe two or three other companies that have a platform like we do, but our difference is in the quality of service you receive in terms of customer service. One of the problems in this industry is that you can make a call and nobody picks up. You send a message, nobody responds. One of the things we guarantee you is that from the beginning of your order to when you receive your order, there is customer support. There is somebody who is attending to you, even if there are delays, which happens in this industry a lot, and you have somebody communicating with you and letting you be at peace until your order is received. Two, we provide a lot of information free of charge.

If you go to our YouTube channel, we have the best YouTube channel, in fact I think we are the only platform that has a YouTube channel that is highly informative. If you go to our channel, one of our videos has been viewed about forty-five to fifty thousand times in the last one to three years and we have a lot of other videos where I take time to answer all kinds of questions like all these questions you asking me now. All of them have been answered because I get all these questions over and over again. I was on a radio station last week or two weeks ago and I was still answering these questions. So we have created videos of all sorts that answer all these questions.

So we pride ourselves in being the best in content because people need to be knowledgeable before they can become profitable in this business. If you just jump in because you are excited about importing things from China and you do not count the costs, you are going to have your fingers burnt.

We also provide quality in terms of speed, we believe that we are competitive in terms of how fast you receive your product. There are people who tell all kinds of lies that you are going to get your goods in five or seven days. And when it comes to the day of collection, stories start to enter and all that. We say the truth. The truth we tell you may not be palatable, may not be what you want to hear. But it is the truth. And by the time you test other people and all that, you’ll find out that we have spoken the truth to you.

And these days we are moving towards serving the bigger guys, the big corporate organizations whom we are attracting because they feel that we are enlightened and educated. And that we are not just people who are just hustling but that we’ve taken time to build something. In the next one month or two we would have launched a corporate platform because we are getting a lot of people who want us to source products, brand, and ship to them. And so we are opening a sourcing and corporate platform where people can submit sourcing requests.

So, in the next one or two years, we’ll have a lot of corporate organizations dealing with us for procurement and shipping from China.

 

That’s nice. So I know Nigeria is one of those peculiar countries in terms of such a business. How do you deal with the customs, logistics and clearing of goods? How are you able to maneuver these bottlenecks to promptly deliver goods?

Well, I think it’s about having the right partnerships. Once you have the right partnerships, I think most of these things are sorted out. You can’t do everything in this business. There’s a value chain. Once you know the right people, things happen seamlessly. So we don’t have issues with customs, we don’t have issues with any agency. Things are done seamlessly. Our goods are cleared on the go and people can receive their goods at our outlet.

Anybody who deals with us will not have issues with customs. Of course, there are products we recommend that you don’t bother importing because you’re going to have serious issues. Anything that has to do with ammunition, whatever it is, or even some prop guns that people use in the movie industry, we don’t even attempt to import them because, with the way our society is now, you don’t want to get involved in anything that will heat up the polity more. So once you steer clear of contra-bands and if you are bringing in food or drug-related products, you have to clear with NAFDAC to make sure that you are qualified or allowed to bring in such products. Once that is clear, you don’t have a problem.

 

What are the challenges you have faced so far?

Yeah, it’s about having the right team because you need the right team in China, you also need the right team in Lagos and all of that.

At the end of the day, people are your greatest asset in any business. At first when we started, we had hired wrongly. We were paying someone, a Chinese, salary to do the job of procurement for our customers, you know, but then we found that the same stinking attitude of some employees was being displayed. They want to do as little as possible and get paid and all that. So we noticed that and we were having a lot of canceled orders.

But immediately we switched to a new partner whom we were paying based on commission, we found out that things changed. So partnerships work better for you than trying to hire people in this kind of business because if you hire people who are not dutiful, who are not sincere, who are not faithful, you’ll find that you are not doing much and you are spending a lot of money trying to maintain the employee who is costing you a lot of money.

So partnerships are better, let people you work with work on commission and that way if there are no orders, there is no payment and if orders come, money is also made and all of that. So I think that that was one big lesson I learnt that partnerships are better than trying to hire people all the time. Of course, there are things that you need employees to do, but you must be careful to note the things that you don’t need permanent employees to do, you need partnerships to handle that.

 

So what would be your advice to those who are looking to go into the business? 

What I advise is first of all, learn, learn, be humble to learn, no matter how smart you think you are. If you wish to be a medical doctor, no matter how smart you are in secondary school, you need to go to medical school to learn. So if you are going into a business that you believe can pay your bills and could make you rich, I think it’s only sensible also that you learn. It’s important that you learn, learning is everything. And that is why we are big on training. We have the best content. So go to our YouTube channel and devour the content we have there and ask questions and get answers before you dable into the business. I think that that is the single, most important thing that anybody needs to do if you are going to succeed in any business at all. Make sure you stoop low to learn. And you’ll be fine.

 

You mentioned you are a software developer. In your view, how is the tech landscape in Nigeria right now? How do you see progress in terms of manpower development in the tech industry?

Tech is doing extremely well in Nigeria today, and most young people are now looking towards tech and all that, but the problem is that the get-rich-quick mindset is still entrenched in the minds of most young people. They see the Paystacks and the Flutterwaves and everybody wants to jump into Fintech, everybody wants to become a programmer. I understand that we all want money at the end of the day, but there is always a process to these things. So when you want to circumvent the process, you will have your fingers burnt.

So, there are many young people today who claim to be programmers but, who do not have the discipline to really do the job. And that’s why many, many companies in Nigeria hire people from outside the country. It’s this problem that Andela wanted to solve, unfortunately, Andela has left Nigeria. But the point is that while there is a lot of things yet to be done in the software space or the technology space, people need to understand that it takes time to create wealth. Money takes time to be built. You need time to build the necessary skills that will enable you to create something valuable. There’s no point claiming to be what you are not. You give some people jobs and they cannot do the jobs. I mean, it’s frustrating.

You give people jobs to do, they won’t do the job. They are looking for the money. There was a team that God literally delivered me from. They kept asking for upfront payment. And somehow I just changed my mind about it because I noticed that the guys had some debt that they needed to quickly offset. And they were looking for my money to do that. So today, even though spreaditglobal is handled locally hundred per cent its been tough getting very good hands.

There is a dearth of very good hands who have the discipline, because it’s not so much about the tech skills, it’s about the other life skills that people don’t have. They don’t have the discipline to get the job done, to keep to time, to keep to their words. You know, they take on ten jobs at the same time and then you find that… And if you want to hire permanently a good software developer, then you must have deep pockets because very good hands are quite expensive and all that.

Tech holds a lot of future for Nigeria and the world, there are a lot of problems yet to be solved in Nigeria, you know. Yes, in the Fintech space, a lot of people are jumping in there because it looks like the lowest hanging fruit but there are many other areas that technology needs to solve problems. And we need people to go into those places and be patient to build a working solution. As for whether they will make money, they will make it. Look at Zoom that we are using today. Who knew Zoom before the pandemic? Most people didn’t know there was anything called Zoom before the pandemic but today the founder of Zoom is a billionaire, multi-billionaire in US dollars and all that.

So there is a lot of money in tech because tech is about solving problems at scale. Being able to solve the problem of a lot of people using much less resources than if you were trying to do it physically and all that. So I think that tech has a lot of future, our young people should go into tech, should learn how to programme and beyond that, should learn life skills. Learn discipline, learn integrity because at the end of the day, these are the things that really matter. Keeping to your word, giving someone your word and your word becomes your bond. These are the more important skills than even the tech skills.

 

Lastly, what does the future hold for spreaditglobal?

Well, as I said, we are going to be focusing a lot more on the corporate guys. The big guys who have mission-critical procurement and shipping to do. We serve the network marketing industry a lot, so we are becoming the preferred procurement and shipping company for some multi-level marketing companies who depend on us to procure, brand, and ship products to several countries for them. Those are very mission-critical jobs. So we hope to serve more and more of them because they give us the kind of revenue that we want. We will be still open for the foreseeable future to serve the mini guys who have 50k because for us it’s a way of empowering people who have small money to find something they can start doing instead of begging for money or going into crime. They can start with little amount. We will continue to serve them but also push aggressively in the area of getting corporate clients who we can do large stuff for.

And in the far future, I don’t know how far it is but we hope to begin to connect African countries. Open up, have our platform such that people in Nigeria can buy products from suppliers in Ghana and in that way we encourage intra-African trade without just focusing on China because there are products unique to Ghana like the Kente which you know about and other products that Ghana has. And if we can open up that sector and help people in other African countries to easily shop and we solve the logistics problem across African countries, I think we would also have unlocked a lot of value. So that is what we are looking at in the future.

 

Is Spreaditglobal looking also at the possibility of exporting some of our products here in Nigeria?

Yeah, we’ve thought about that. We’ve tinkered on it but the truth is that we are just three years old and so we are still a baby. Maybe by the time we are five years old and we have become more established, then we can look at that area.

There are other companies I know that do that today where you can export to the US but we could look carefully at the things that we can export to China because China is a very large market instead of just bringing in but we need to have some level of clout. Some very deep pockets to be able to explore these options. The opportunities are limitless really, there are so many things to do that we have not even scratched the surface. So we are really going to look at that but not immediately.