Feegor's story starts with our Co-founder and CEO, Ugonna Ginigeme. Ugonna's passion for entrepreneurship dates back to his early childhood, where at the age of 7, he was already writing about his aspirations to own big businesses in the future. While he didn't yet know the word "entrepreneurship," it was clear that he had a natural drive and curiosity to create and build something of his own. Ugonna pursued his passion for entrepreneurship while studying Engineering at the University of Ibadan. As a student entrepreneur, he tried his hands on multiple businesses across a variety of sectors but encountered several failures. However, these setbacks did not deter him from pursuing his dream, and after learning that the major cause of his failures was the lack of an easy and efficient way for customers to discover and patronize him, he eventually founded his first startup, Vasiti.

Vasiti which started off as an online marketplace for student entrepreneurs to trade their products and services eventually became an all-in-one app consisting of interconnected but independent marketplaces for Business-to-Customer(B2C) and Business-to-Business(B2B) retail transactions. Over the years, Ugonna bootstrapped the company and successfully onboarded thousands of businesses and customers in Nigeria. Vasiti's growth and offerings uniquely positioned it as Nigeria’s first digital infrastructure business that enabled stakeholders across the retail value chain to discover, connect, and offer value to each other in an easy and efficient manner. While building Vasiti, battling with challenges, and learning from failures, Ugonna and Sunday (Co-founder and CTO at Vasiti) continuously analyzed data across the ecosystem and eventually became convinced that a major, profitable, and scalable problem that was begging for a solution was the problem of discovery and supply chain operations for B2B transactions.

A major challenge faced by retailers is lack of easy access to manufacturers or major wholesalers to buy goods in bulk as most retailers have access to only a few suppliers (manufacturers & wholesalers) and are not able to get the best prices and the best terms. Supply chain operations are inefficient, manual, and poses a nightmare for millions of SMEs across Africa. Ugonna, who possessed years of wholesale and retail experience in the traditional(or informal) retail sector could relate fully with this problem and together, he, Sunday, Lucy, and Sukruthi, decided to build a solution that will fix this by leveraging their past experiences across emerging markets and focusing exclusively on addressing what they identified as the most significant and scalable problem in Africa’s informal retail seector.

As a result of this, Feegor was born, a B2B marketplace that enables retailers to discover, connect, and source goods directly from local manufacturers and major wholesalers. Through Feegor, Ugonna, his co-founders and his team have set out to streamline the process of sourcing products, managing inventory, and navigating the complexities of the supply chain. By doing so, Feegor is helping retailers save time and money, while also providing them with access to a wider range of products that can enhance their customer offerings. Additionally, by partnering with Buy-Now Pay Later (BNPL) services, Feegor is providing access to credit and helping to improve cash flow for businesses.

Feegor's story is one of passion, perseverance, and a commitment to solving real problems in the retail industry. Ugonna's goal is to build Feegor to become one of Africa’s fastest growing startups that will leverage easy-to-use technology to digitize informal retail on the continent and help boost the African economy.