We missed it; it turns out that Abeg which sponsored BBNaija had been acquired by PiggyVest parent company, PiggyTech, according to dnbstories: “Abeg was acquired (very secretly) by its older and richer industry peer – Piggytech, the parent company of PiggyVest. Unlike Abeg, PiggyVest is doing well and is actually one of Nigeria’s most popular savings app. In fact, PiggyVest easily makes the list of Nigeria’s most valued fintech startups.” They just renamed Abeg to Pocket. I think that is a more respectable name.
Pocket (formerly Abeg) is a social commerce and payments app from Piggyvest. The company was launched officially in 2021 as a payments platform for sending and receiving money and has now evolved into a full social commerce app with payments embedded. Micro-entrepreneurs can upload items directly from their Instagram with one click, add delivery options and rates, set price, and quantity, add pictures, and videos, escrow funds and can even allow for negotiation within one secure app.
Big lesson: until you have a great product-market fit, spending $$millions on advertising will not help you. Great companies attain that product market fit first before they begin to blitzscale. That is the only way you can retain customers and get the best investors (the customers) to support your mission. Otherwise, you can spend $$millions on BBNaija and still struggle.
Abeg spent heavily on promotion but it struggled to have a great product market fit at a point it could make money. Of course, great companies could be sold, and that does mean that even extremely amazing companies can decide to exit the market. It could be that Abeg has generated great value and wants to cash out! But I will not vote on that, at this phase of its growth.
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