When Ife Oyedele II (’13 B.B.A.) was on campus, he’d send parcels to family in his native Nigeria. But there was a problem — the packages wouldn’t always get there. So, after graduation, he moved home and co-founded a company that would deliver a solution.
Oyedele discovered Nigerian transport issues stemmed from a lack of technology, accountability and monetary incentive. So he built a business model with that in mind.
Kobo360 — run by Oyedele and business partner Ozi Ozor, whom he met while at UM-Dearborn — is an Uber-like app connecting Nigerian truckers to companies with freight needs.
Here’s how it works: A company puts in a freight request through the Kobo360 dashboard and available drivers are notified there’s a new job they can accept; all transactions — including instant driver payment upon successful delivery — are coordinated through Kobo360. After a job, drivers and companies can leave reviews for one another.
What started from a personal experience now has multinational reach. Unilever, Honeywell and DHL are among those using the solution Oyedele helped create.
