Pricepally.com

The average adult person living in urban cities in Africa today faces an ever-increasing demand on thier money and time, two most critical resources. 

The latest figures by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has revealed that Nigerians spends 56.4% of their household income on food, the highest in the world.  

In urban African cities,road traffic is increasingly getting worse because of infastructural challenges and population boom, at least 3 of every 10 years spent in Lagos is lost to traffic. Over half a billion people face these challenges in Africa daily.

Pricepally is a sharing economy e-commerce platform that enables users to pool money together to buy food and daily needs in bulk, so that they can save money on bulk purchase and have thier items delivered to their doorstep, saving them time as well.

We are solving the problem of the high price of food and daily needs in developing urban economies. 

In 2018/19, a team of World Bank economists researched on price levels,the results indicate that African cities are relatively more expensive, despite having lower income levels. The price levels of goods and services consumed by households are 25 to 28 percent higher in Sub-Saharan Africa than in other low- and middle-income countries, relative to their income levels. Such high costs of living could constrain livelihood of low-income urban residents, as well as the development of Africa’s urban economies.

Africa is currently the least urbanized continent, but its urbanization rate of 3.5 percent per year is the fastest in the world.  The McKinsey Global Institute projects that by 2016, over 500 million Africans will live in urban areas, and 65 African cities will have populations of over 1 million.

This is huge problem but its also a huge opportunity for us to significantly increase social inclusion and shared prosperity using food and daily needs.

This innovation directly impacts middle and low-income families in fast-growing African cities. We empower the low and middle-income class working men and women, who are usually the breadwinners of their families to save money on their food and daily needs. This includes fathers, mothers, and sometimes adult children, they make decisions on what and when to buy. 

We are helping them save money and time by leveraging a sharing economy and e-commerce models. Pricepally guarantees to save them up to between 25%-50% on their monthly food and daily need budgets compared to how they shop at open-air markets and supermarkets, .

Before our MVP was launched, we got feedback from our focus group of 12 families in a pilot test, these families were able to save up to 26% on their monthly budget on food.  We surveyed other groups including staff members of companies, cooperatives, faith groups and occupants of residential housing estates to understand their pain points and how best to serve them. 

Our solution also helps producers and wholesalers by aggregating demand for them,We surveyed them to understand the quality, timelines and how best to partner and procure from them.

Pricepally.com is a sharing economy e-commerce platform that enables people to shop together in groups to leverage their collective bargaining power and the economies of bulk purchase to buy more and save more at their convenience.

Our launched MVP enables users to do the following: users can register an account, shop for products to buy bulk items outrightly or click pally to split the cost of the bulk item with others. They can do this by inviting their family or friends in their social network. i.e. a user initiates a pally and determines how many people to share the cost of the item with, he or she then receives a link for each invitee and sends it to them via whatsapp, email or other social media platform of choice.

The invited user clicks on the pally link and is directed to the product page, showing the product splitted price and the size or quantity of the item they will be entitled to on payment, the initiator and the invited users go ahead to pay for their share and checkout, they can checkout and exit immediately or go around shopping for more. 

We connect these bulk orders directly to our verified suppliers and it is delivered to the Pricepally service center. We wash, verify quality,  package, sort and send out for deliveries. We deliver to their doorstep and ask for feedback or tell them more about our product and service.

Our soon to launch mobile app will enable users do more, users will be able to create a profile on sign up, follow each other and shop together. They will be able to create a "closed pally" which means they can add food and daily items into one cart with their pally's on the network and checkout to split the cost or they create an "open pally" which is an open view of ongoing pally orders for all other users to see and join if they are interested. As soon as an order is complete we set out to deliver. 

Our impact benefits everyone in our ecosystem. We enable users to save money and time, the producers and suppliers are able to sell off their items in bulk quickly, the data gathered from customers is fed back to the system to improve our operations and those of our partner producers and wholesalers.  

Cooperative or group shopping is popular among formal and informal cooperative societies in Nigeria and across the world, people come together to pull resources so as to save money on their food and other essentials. e.g women groups, student groups, civil service groups etc. 

We are innovating by using technology to transform an existing model to increase inclusion and make commerce convenient and fun. 

We are building a platform that can enable billions of people shop food and daily needs in groups at a much cheaper rate by aggregating their demand and connecting it to producers and wholesalers, conveniently at scale. 

We are creating a new economy by combining e-commerce, social networking, cooperative commerce, fin-tech and direct wholesaler/manufacturer to consumer models. We are designing it to be fast, fun, easy to use and to improve at scale. 

Pricepally.com will promote inclusion, increase knowlegde sharing among users, build social capital and increase prosperity. This creates a new dimension of perfomance.

The core technology that supports our business model is a software with the following components

Ecommerce: we are providing convenience using e-commerce

Shared pricing feature - this is a feature that enables 2 or more users contribute to buy a product they are interested in.

Matching algorithm - This is an algorithm within the Pricepally platform that matches users who are interested in same product, making it easier for people to connect with other people to shop together with.

Social Network- This allows users to create profiles, follow each other, create and share wish list and shop together.Our algorithm is designed to enable social connections that creates shopping groups, transfer of knowlegde, within the user’s network and the pricepally’s network 

Social media intergration - We have integrated whatsapp into the system, we maybe integrating others such as Instagram and others in the future

Cooperative shopping is a well proven method people use to save money dating back to centuries. The earliest known record of this method was in the 1800's. There are thousands of consumer organisations across Africa.

We ran pilot test for 4 months serving 12 families and our stealth launch MVP is serving more people. 

During our pilot test, we were able to help these families including mine save 26%-30% monthly on yam. Yam is a very popular food in Nigeria, around March to June, a tuber of yam is sold at the retail market in Lagos at an average price of N1300 exclusive of shipping cost. An average family of 4 eats 8 tubers per month, which is N10,400 per month. 10 families in our pilot program pooled N8000 each, to buy 100 tubers of yam at N80,000 directly from the wholesaler, it cost N800 each, each family got 2 more tubers, 10 in total, which is still less than the cost of 8 tubers at retail markets.

They saved N500 on each yam in comparison, enabling them to save and buy more. The cost of shipping is also considerably low owing to the bulk shipping factor, to ship each yam cost N35 only.

Since our MVP launch, we have enabled more people save money on other items like tomatoes, onions, beef etc.

We served 12 people in our pilot test, we have served more families since our beta launch. In year one, we plan to serve 350,000 - 500,000 people in Lagos, Nigeria. In 5 years, we hope to be serving 50 million+ people in at least 3 different countries across Africa and possibly India.

We empower the low and middle-income class working men and women, who are usually the breadwinners of families, this includes fathers, mothers, and sometimes adult children living in urban cities of Africa and other developing nations. 

We expect the millennial generation to be the early adopters of this platform and by network effect reach the older generation. The solution directly benefits women who mostly do the shopping and consequently, families. It saves them money and time which they can now spend together. 

On the supply side, we directly benefit farmers, wholesalers and FMCG companies by helping them aggregate demand to sell faster. As the demands grows we will be able to off take agricultural produce, FMCG products in larger quantities reducing their time on ROI and eliminating waste. 

DATA: over time we will be able to ethically gather data on the food and FMCG market, this data will benefit us, farmers, FMCG companies and other industries.

Our goal from now till five years and beyond is to increase the rate of inclusion, social capital and prosperity. We are determined to help people their buy food and daily needs cheaper so that they can save money and time to do other important things.

Our model guarantees that we can only achieve more by including more people, we plan to significantly increase the number of people on the platform over the next 5 years by consistently improving the network effect of Pricepally,investing in strategic marketing and advertising online and offline. We expect the platform to be at least 50 million people strong in 5 years.

Our goal in year 1 is to serve 3 million Lagosians and replicate our model in other cities in Nigeria and by year 2 and 3, we will scale to cities outside Nigeria i.e  Accra and Nairobi, other other African cities we plan to serve include  Pretoria, Johannesburg and  Cairo.We will be creating sustainable coopertative economic clusters online within the cities we serve by aggregating demands for food and daily needs within these cities and directing them to the producers and wholesale markets within or closest to each city. On or before year 5,we plan to have expanded into India into its cities to help more people connect to a new economy that enables them save money and time.

We will also be looking to develop other industries that the Pricepally app can be applied to improve e.g real estate, rents and housing.

1. Food price flunctuations:  food prices can be very unstable due to different natural and infastructural defeciences e.g not enough harvested food items are preserved for when it is out of season, energy to process or preserve is epileptic, farm to city logistics is challenging etc.

2. Financial: we need funding to create structure and support system for the business, we need a furnished operational office space, build technology, workshop, vehicles for logistics etc. In 2-3 years, we will need money to scale the solution into other countries in Africa.

3. Logistics: last mile logistics can also be a challenge due to poor planning of cities and houses etc.

1.) As we grow, we will understand the market more and be able to build sustainable models around price of products, we will be able to guarantee direct supply from farmers by finding reliable farms to directly partner with. We will also create an AI that can help predict this price flunctuations from what we learn.

2.) We are operation a lean budget model,we do not keep stock or inventory,instead we operate a just in time model using the cities wholesale open air market as inventory. This simplifies logistics making it much cheaper and more efficient. We will be acquiring more customers via the network effect this will cut the cost of acquring customers to a significantly low amount.

3a.) Logistics: logistics is tough and can be expensive because of infrastructural deficits but there is an increase in solutions available in Lagos today and it is getting better. We are reducing this cost using volume, the more we can move per transaction the lower the cost, we will work to increase average basket sizes to enable us move more volume at scale and reducing our cost significantly. 

3b.) The inverse is an increased challenge of last mile delivery. We have an option of outsourcing some of our last mile deliveries to capable and agile shipping companies and we also plan to mitigate this also by opening up pick up spots where our customer clustered in cities we serve.

4.)  We will actively be raising funds via grants and equities as its necessary

We are currently 8 full time staff including 4 founders and 2 partime staff.

Luther Lawoyin (CEO) is a serial entrepreneur, his most recent venture which he founded is Lucy.ng, a multi niche e-commerce platform has done over $1million in sales. He created passjamb.com.ng an ed tech startup in 2010 which he later sold 2 years later. In the 2012/13, he co founded a healthy food startup called Potato Lagos and a civic responsive platform called greenwhitepolls.com in 2008 both which later folded up. 

He studied business administration at the university of Lagos. He brings over a decade of business development experience and a wealth of experience in e-commerce and marketplaces in Nigeria.

Jumai Abalaka (COO) She is a graduate of Architecture, an entreprenuer with over 10 years experience in the food and beverage business. She is very well connected to rural farmers,offtakers and wholesalers, she is responsible for onboarding suppliers, food sourcing, processing and delivering.

Mosunmola Adefemi-Lawoyin (CDO) She is a computer scientist and data analyst she has over 3 years experience in data analysis and more than 5 years experience in e-commerce operations. She helped build and grow a niche e-commerce platform from scratch to profitability. She is a graduate of computer science and has a masters in geoinformatics. 

Ahmed Mukoshy (CTO) He is a full stack developer, mobile & web developer with over 10 years experience. He is a graduate of physics and he is proficient in different coding languages . He is the founder of gigalayer, a leading web hosting company in Nigeria

We are partnering with farmers, wholesalers, farm off takers, agricultural cooperative societies and small holder farmers in Nigeria. We currently have signed partnerships with 34 food wholesalers and 2 farms. We have many more to onboard and sign partnerships with.

We are partnering and plan to partner with more FMCG manufacturing companies in Nigeria, it will be great if we can get supplies directly from them to consumers as we aggregate more demand. Our partnership will further help us engineer deeper discounts for people who shop on the platform.   We are open to have as many FMCG companies that have their product in demand as partners.

We are looking to partner with estate landlords, neighborhood associations, cooperative societies, companies, communities and religious organization, across Nigeria, so that we can directly on-board users en masse.

Pricepally is an application that enables sharing, we have created a wholesale  e-commerce platform where users can shop bulk food items and daily needs in groups to leverage their purchasing power and economies of bulk purchase, it is essentially an online food and daily needs coopertive.

Our business model is direct sales to consumer via e-commerce. We position our solution to directly benefit low and middle-income class working men and women, who are usually the breadwinners of their families. We aggregate their demands for their food and daily needs and connect it directly to producers or wholesalers who offer bulk items at deep discounts on the Pricepally platform, this enables us sell to customers offering them huge savings. We also deliver their orders to their doorstep saving them time as well.

On the supply side, we directly benefit farmers and FMCG companies by helping them sell faster. As we include more people and the demand for products grow, we will be able to buy agricultural produce, FMCG products in large quantities reducing their time on ROI and eliminating waste. 

DATA: overtime, we will be able to ethically gather actionable data on the food and FMCG market which will benefit pricepally.com, farmers, FMCG companies and other industries.

Pricepally.com is a for-profit venture. Our revenue generation model is direct sales to consumer. We sell every food item and daily need on the website at a profit. 

We will also ethically sell market data analysis on FMCG and the food market in cities we serve to organizations that need them. 

We also plan to raise venture funds in equity or debt as the business grows.

We are applying because of the immense value MIT can bring to our project in terms of knowledge, mentorship, technical expertise, media exposure, funding opportunities and intelectual capital. We are applying for the MIT spotlight effect, we are applying to take advantage of these immense resources and valuable connections that will open doors for the solution across the world, a foot in the door to thrive. 

The opportunity to pitch Pricepally.com at the Solve Challenge Finals during UN General Assembly Week in New York City in September will be a great opportunity to share our vision of putting a huge dent on global poverty and food shortage

We would like to partner with government's and agencies in fast developing African cities, starting with the Lagos state of Nigeria. Agencies responsible for food, commerce and trade to glean from their understanding of their markets and regions.

We would like to partner with research bodies such as the world food program, world bank committee on sustainable city project to glean from their research and insights in the continous building of this solution.

We would like to partner with manufacturers and wholesalers of FMCG products in Nigeria and other countries we serve. we  will buy directly from them as demands grow, we also help them by providing consumer insights from data we gather,some of the popular companies we will like to partner in Nigeria are  Nestle, Unilever, Dangote group, Dufil Prima foods,Cormart Nigeria Ltd, PZ Cussons, etc.

We will also like to partner with local farmers, food farms, cooperative societies,  wholesalers and commodity trading companies in Nigeria and other countries we serve.

We will use the prize to further deepen our technology, our planned app has many applications of AI which includes matching users with same shopping habits or product interest, our algorithm will suggests shoppers within the Pricepally network to come together on similar interests. It will be used to improve recommendations for customers and manage a more effecient sales process.

As we grow and gather more relevant data, we plan to build AI application into our business process that can help predict food prices ahead of time, this will help us plan better against the continous flunctuation of food prices.

We are also applying  AI to build chat bots that will help give users a smooth group shopping experience 24/7 as we expect to include as many people as possible on the platform, the best option is to have an AI solution to manage users. 

If we win the prize, we will use it to cover startup and operational costs. 

This includes: 

Rent for office space and two pick up centres

Hire talents: we will grow our technical, administrative , growth and marketing team to grow the business rapidly

Advertising: we will use some of the funds to advertise to our target market on and offline.

 Product research: we will keep improving on our solution this will require research.

 Product launch: this will cover formal launch, as well as product and brand activation

Our solution directly benefits the African woman, she is the one who many times provides for the family and most times goes to the market to buy food and daily needs for the family, she does this at least twice a month. It takes her a lot of her time, her energy and money. Her entire life is given to cater to our family.

We are offering the African woman a digital platform that can enable her shop food and daily needs at deep discounts in her home conveniently  with the items delivered to her doorstep. We are economically and personally empowering her, because she saves more money and she doesn't stress herself to the market anymore.

Our solution is reimagining a solution to a huge problem of high cost of food and daily needs at retail in urban African cities, we will be committing the prize money to further build our technology platform and the business. We will invest the money into further deepening our tech, advertising our solution and hiring employees to build the solution and include more people.