Happy first anniversary to Verraki people, clients, and friends.
We are thankful to our clients for trusting us with their services and grateful to our people, for entrusting their career to Verraki and helping to deliver our services to clients.
When we started this journey in June of 2018, I and my friends, as co-founding partners of Verraki sensed there was an opportunity to create an African practice owned by Africans and with a deep passion for Africa, that would deploy global capabilities combined with local insights to solve Africa’s seemingly intractable problems. This is what we started doing as Verraki on April 1, 2019, and we are grateful for the opportunity to be working with people, business partners, and clients who want to make the impossible possible.
Every day of the last 12 months has been an incredible journey and experience! In 12 months, we have retained all the clients we brought over from Accenture specifically: First Bank, Union Bank, Access Bank, Dangote, MTN and Central Bank of Nigeria. In addition, we are excited by the trust of new clients – Wema Bank, Polaris Bank, ADF, FALCON, RDF, ARFH, CRC Credit Reference Company, AHA and SuperTV amongst others – that we have served in our first year.
Within this period, we have almost doubled the headcount of permanent staff we had at commencement, moved into our new office, and expanded our services and offerings. We are also laying the foundation with Verraki Ventures to invest in startups and venture-build the next generation of unicorn and corporate giants from Africa and are contributing to nation-building and community service through our involvement in the NESG, Junior Achievement Nigeria, Fate Foundation, Lagos Business School, LCCI, Corona Schools, WIMBIZ and the American Business Council, among others. Through these community engagements and partnerships, Verraki is helping to build a more competitive Nigeria and develop a generation of conscientious young people and entrepreneurs who are empowered with the right skills to succeed in a rapidly changing world.
I am particularly pleased with our support for and involvement in multiple private sector initiatives addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, which affirms our relevance and positioning as a trusted partner and force for good. We are steadily creating an enabling ecosystem where innovation bloom, ideas thrive, problems become possibilities, passion grows into purpose, potential turns into performance and people prosper.
As we toast to our 1st anniversary, we look forward to:
Welcoming new investors and transitioning Verraki into a limited liability company. This will enable us to develop the capacity to significantly hire and develop more talents, venture-build more startups, strengthen our Technology Solutions team to enable Verraki develop innovative digital solutions and introduce new services into the market.
1. Introducing new 3rd party solutions through reseller agreements with global software owners. These agreements will enable us deliver niche solutions to address unmet needs of our clients.
2. Geographical expansion, starting with a few projects in Ghana in 2020 and over the next few years, across West and East Africa.
3. We thank all our clients for entrusting their strategic business projects to us and we thank our people for their diligence and dedication to the improved performance of our clients.
In closing, the COVID – 19 pandemic continues to rage and informs the current lockdown in a few states in Nigeria. Together we will overcome this pandemic and I look forward to the resumption of activities to normal in the weeks ahead. Till then, please maintain social distancing and improved personal hygiene. Stay Home! Stay Strong! Stay Positive! Stay Healthy!
Happy Anniversary to Us!