TechCabal has learned that SimplePay, a Nigerian payments startup is adding Marek Zmyslowski to its board. He will be joining Tomi Davies, Nigerian tech luminary and angel investor in an advisory capacity to the company. He will also be acquiring stock in the company for an undisclosed amount of investment.
According to SimplePay’s founder and CEO, Simeon Ononobi, the company will benefit from Marek’s “extensive experience around the dot com and the Nigerian internet scene”, especially in the payments department, having tackled those issues head on himself while running an online hotel booking platform.
Marek traces the origins of his newly inked involvement in SimplePay back to a conference in Abuja at which he met Simeon Ononobi and became interested in the business.
“Business is about people”, he says. “We just clicked”.
Although mostly known for his CEO role at Rocket Internet startup, Jovago, Marek has been casting himself into an angel role for a while now, and confirms to TechCabal that he has been investing.
Earlier in the year, we reported that Simple Pay was calling in the cavalry. Three senior experts from Seedstars, its seed investor from 2013 have taken on executive roles in the startup to aggressively ramp up its scaling efforts and carve a niche in in Nigerian and African payments, amid contenders like Interswitch, Paga, eTranzact, and global payments giant, PayPal.
Marek does not reckon there will be conflicts between his SimplePay board seat and his current role as CEO of a Rocket Internet company in Nigeria.
“Jovago is my baby. It utilizes 100% of my focus, time and energy. Everything else is a way for me to spend free time, have fun and make money maybe in the long term”.
