Mr. Dele Odufuye, CEO, Tsaboin, promoters of Tsaboin TrafficTalk, a traffic solution online platform, has said that accessing financial support would increase the survival rate of tech startups in the country.
According to Odufuye, while speaking on his decade-old experience as a tech entrepreneur, he noted that lack of appropriate funding, notwithstanding how brilliant an idea or unique a solution that a tech developer has, lack of appropriate funding could hinder such idea.
He said: “It is important to highlight one of the ingredients to a business’ success: cash. The truth is that, in business, cash is king. There are a lot of reasons why businesses fail but the major one is that they run out of cash or they do not have enough cash to start with in the first place. If there is one rule, one major rule, it is not to run out of cash.
The future of the country and even the world is technology. We need to seriously start looking in that direction. Tech developers and entrepreneurs, like any other entrepreneurs, need all the support they can get. Many solutions that could add value to the society have been aborted because the idea owner couldn’t access funding to support such innovations.
In the case of Tsaboin, which today, is the biggest online traffic solution platform in Nigeria, we encountered the same financial challenge at the beginning. We had a number of projects that we were developing simultaneously. These projects were consuming the little cash the company was generating. At a time, we had to reduce our staff strength in order to cope. Despite this, we didn’t give up. We kept at it until an investor showed up. And with that, we had enough cash injection for the entire period of research, development, testing, and growth till we started generating revenue. Without enough cash injection, we wouldn’t have been able to kick off or even die along the way.”
A major component of the Tsaboin traffic solution is the live cameras installed in strategic routes across Lagos like Ozumba Mbadiwe, Anthony, Ikorodu Road, 3rd Mainland Bridge etc. Users can now view videos of traffic situations real time on their preferred routes through these live cameras. To achieve this, he said, serious funding is critical.
Odufuye, who is also a two-time winner of the popular Future Awards in the “Best Use of Technology”, advocated a special intervention fund for tech entrepreneurs, which he said, would empower them and provide the platform for young Nigerians to unleash their technological skills and potentials.
Shedding more light on Tsaboin Traffic Talk, Odufuye said the solution was designed to provide real-time traffic information to road users in Lagos in order to make an informed choice on the routes to ply.
“Traffic Talk is a crowd-sourcing online platform that road users can use to help one another beat traffic by informing about road and traffic conditions. This shared information will help road users make smarter decisions about routes to ply and avoid,” he said.
The Tsaboin Traffic Talk application is available on both mobile and web formats. The mobile version can be downloaded for android phones, Blackberry, iOS, among others. Aside these, traffic updates are also available through sms via a short code [TRF to 3880] for Etisalat subscribers.
For downloads, simply log on to www.tsaboin.com/downloads and for traffic camera live feeds, log on to www.tsaboin.com/livecams.
