Redbank Francis Adereti

Profits, partners and pitching to the president!

August 12, 2016 - Blog Posts

By: Francis Adereti, SE Entrepreneur – SE Outreach 2016

It’s been about three and half months since I left Stockholm. I had acquired so much energy to implement all the new ideas and strategies which I was privileged enough to have been exposed to in the city.

One of the main creative insights I obtained, out of quite a few, was finding a way to monetize our platform, as that would be the only way to make our social business sustainable and also profitable.

I had a series of meetings with my team immediately when I got back to Nigeria, to discuss the new strategies. It was something they were all excited to hear about and consequently, we started executing these strategies right away.

We went out to find out what our paying customers needed. What were the features they would like to pay for? We also carried out a Market Survey in regards that, and to our utmost surprise, we found out that what the customers really needed was different from what we thought they needed! Interesting, right?

Immediately we had to adjust our business plan to suit their needs. We also partnered with the Redcross Organization in Lagos State to carry out a blood donor drive. We introduced our donor platform to them in the process and thereby gained more traction.

RedbankThe donor platform is for keeping digital records of blood donors and their blood types and for sending periodic reminders to them and being able to easily contact them when there is a need for them to come over to donate more blood. It was built for blood banks and donor organizations that are into blood donation drive.

My mentor (Johan Mast) has been of great help. He passed along various feedbacks and suggestions during our various Skype meetings. He also helped track my goals during the process.

I have been able to complete the business plan/pricing model I was supposed to work on. So we have something good to work with. We’ve also started working on advertising (both offline and digital) to the hospitals.

In the meantime, great things have been happening. My team was selected as one of the 30 most innovative startup companies in Nigeria (by a program organised by the Federal Government) and we will be going over to pitch our ideas to the president!

It’s been success stories all through and attending the SE Outreach Accelerator in Stockholm was one of the best things that could have happened to my company! It has been great working with all these awesome people and I am looking forward to the next time I get to see them.