PricePally.com

Food insecurity is prevalent in urban African cities, food is expensive, can be unsafe, difficult to get and untraceable e.g Nigerians living in its urban cities spend over 50% of their monthly income on food which is the highest in the world. Pricepally is a digital food cooperative that enables people buy food in bulk or share bulk food with others sourced directly from farmers and wholesalers making it cheaper and fresher than buying at retail. Pricepally helps families save up to 20%-30% of their monthly spend on food.

The Pricepally platform can be scaled across Africa and other developing nations where food insecurity persists, to help reduce cost and make farm to table value chain more efficient.

We are solving the problem of food insecurity in urban African cities and other developing cities with the most important problem being the high cost of food. Food is expensive due to many factors such as the problem of access to market for farmers, first and last mile logistics,lack of adequate storage facilities, long and inefficient value chain of middle men, low income etc.

According to the USDA and the World Economic Forum data, Nigerians spend over half of their household income on food (the highest in the world), and there are nine other countries that spend over 40% of their income on food. Four of them are in Africa: Nigeria 56.4%; Kenya 46.7%; Cameroon 45.6%; and Algeria 42.5%.

According to Nigeria's National Bureau of Statistics report on household consumption expenditure in 2019, it revealed that of the total household expenditure, 56.65% of the household in 2019 was spent on food and it is significantly higher for people who earn the minimum wage (N30,000/$75).

This problem affects over half a billion people in Africa alone, it affects many families feeding choices, many eat less than 3 meals a day,many choose starchy or less nutritious food because of lower prices.

Pricepally is a web and app platform that enables people buy food in bulk or share bulk food items with others online directly from farmers and wholesalers making it cheaper and fresher than buying at retail, delivered to their doorstep. e.g fresh baskets of tomatoes supplied by farmers and wholesalers are listed on the platform, a user can choose to buy a basket or buy a quarter of the basket along side others who are buying a quarter or half the basket as well. It helps people save money because it is direct wholesale supply with no middle men cost incurred. 

We leverage eCommerce technology and a sharing economy model to aggregate food demand in cities and to match that demand directly to supplies from farmers  and wholesalers, we give farmers and wholesalers direct access to consumers.

Our solution serves low income to middle income families living in urban African cities. Our ideal customers are women or adults in families who decide what the family eats and where to buy them, they are usually within the age of 24 to 62 years. They are mostly career women with a 9 to 5 job or a business they run.

We usually speak to them over the phone before and after they buy, we ask relevant questions about their pain points, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, food items they need, reasonable food price points etc. We also watch and learn from how they interact with our technology, what they buy, spend time on, etc.

We are currently working on a USSD solution for low income customers which will connect them to food supply on subscription basis using an agent network approach for supply. We developed this idea after several interviews with customers and public research.

The problem of high cost of food in developing cities is mainly due to long and inefficient supply chain, several layers of costs are added before food reaches the end consumer. The Pricepally platform enables people to access fresh food directly from farmers and wholesalers, we shorten the supply chain and provide farmers and wholesalers direct access to aggregated food demand in cities

At Pricepally, we have basically provided a technology infrastructure for an already existing and popular method of food shopping. Traditionally, people come together to leverage on collective food shopping by buying in bulk and sharing to save money. We are innovating by using technology to transform an existing model to increase its efficiency at scale. 

Traditionally, people look for family and friends to join in bulk food buying and sharing but they are limited to people they know or can reach, they are limited to people who are interested per time, they are also limited to sellers available to them in the market. 

 However, users on Pricepally are not limited in any of these regards, Pricepally connects people together with same interest at any time of the day directly to enough supply from farmers and wholesalers.  The Pricepally technology and model also presents a new dimension of performance because it gets better for consumer and supplier at scale, the more people come together to buy food the lower the cost can become and the faster farmers and wholesalers can clear their inventory.

We use simple already existing technology and combine them to serve a solution.

Ecommerce: we are provide an online platform where people can buy food and have it delivered to their doorstep.

Matching algorithm & price splitting feature - Pricepally matches users together interested in the same product and splits the wholesale cost for each user's share.

Social Network- Users can create profiles, follow each other, create and share wish list, chat and shop together. we enable social connections that allows for referrals and mimics real life shopping experiences.

Social media integration - We have integrated whatsapp into the system, which serves for referring others or sharing shopping experiences. 

Pricepally already serves customers in Lagos Nigeria alone, we have over 3000 registered users with over 1000 paying customers, we have over 2000 active app installs (verifiable online) and completed over 1600 food orders. 

Our customers also review our service from time to time https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.decodershub.pricepally 

In the short term, our platform helps consumers save money on their monthly food spend, which enables families have extra to spend on other important things, it helps relieves financial stress and improves their over all well being. Our platform in the short term also enables social interaction that leads to knowledge sharing around food within the community. This enables people learn about different food items to make more informed choices around what they buy to eat, this in the long term increases their health.

We are able to give farmers and wholesalers data on what food item people are interested in,food that they eat more of and also less of. This data will enable farmers plant smarter and help us improve distribution even further so that less food is wasted in future.

in the long term, when Pricepally controls a significant portion of demand in cities, we are able to provide food items at much more lower cost to consumers, people are able to buy more and eat more nutritious food for less, this improves the lives of consumers across urban cities leading to a healthier and more productive population

We are currently serving about 1000 paying customers, we expect to serve over 300,000 by the end of next year and in five years over 10,000,000 people across 5 countries.

Our goal from now and in the next five years is to reduce the cost of food in urban African cities by as much as 30% within the next year and as high as 50% within the next five years. 

Our model guarantees that we can achieve lower food costs by on-boarding more consumers, the more demand we can aggregate, the more leverage we have to bargain lower prices from producers and wholesalers.

Our goal in 2-3 years is to serve at least 2 million people in Lagos and replicate our model in other cities in Nigeria and outside of Nigeria. We plan to onboard more users by having users invite their families and friends to join on discounted food prices, we have an inbuilt network effect that guarantees more people joining by referrals.

Financial: we need funds to increase visibility, advertise and market the Pricepally across the cities we plan to serve.

Food price fluctuations:  food prices can be very unstable due to different natural and infrastructural deficiencies e.g not enough harvested food items are preserved for when it is out of season, energy to process or preserve is epileptic, farm to city logistics is challenging etc. 

Storage: There are not enough food storage facility to serve the urban cities, when food items are out of season food become more expensive and lower in quality. To guarantee efficient supply all year round, there has to be food storage systems to serve the demand.

Financial: we will raise funds such as grants, loans and sales of equity. 

Food price fluctuations; we peg against price fluctuations through strategic partnerships with suppliers. We guarantee suppliers a pre-determined amount of orders per month and negotiate at the best possible price e.g we currently buy 800 baskets of 50kg tomato baskets per month from suppliers at a lower price fixed for the month period, no matter when we pick up

Storage: we will enter strategic partnerships with owners and operators of public and private storage facility to better leverage their service for our partner farmers and supplier cooperatives. In the future we will also invest in storage spaces and technology.

The team consist of 4 founders, 8 full time staff, 4 part time 

Luther Lawoyin (CEO) is a serial entrepreneur and experienced e-commerce entrepreneur. He founded 4 startups before Pricepally. He failed at one, exited  one, and his most recent venture which he founded is Lucy.ng, a multi niche e-commerce platform which has done over $1.5 million in sales before he left.  He created passjamb.com.ng an edtech startup in 2010 which he sold 2 years later. In the 2012/13,he co founded a healthy food startup called PotatoLagos which folded up. 

He studied business administration at the university of Lagos. He brings over a decade of business development experience and a wealth of experience in e-commerce and marketplaces in Nigeria.

Jumai Abalaka (COO) She is a graduate of Architecture, an entreprenuer with over 10 years experience in the food and beverage business. She is very well connected to rural farmers,offtakers and wholesalers, she is responsible for onboarding suppliers, food sourcing, processing and delivering.

Mosunmola Adefemi-Lawoyin (CDO) She is a computer scientist and data analyst she has over 3 years experience in data analysis and more than 5 years experience in e-commerce operations. She helped build and grow a niche e-commerce platform from scratch to profitability. She is a graduate of computer science and has a masters in geoinformatics. 

Deepak Bansal (CTO) He is a full stack developer, mobile & web developer with over 10 years experience. He is a graduate of physics and he is proficient in different coding languages . He is the founder of decodershub a leading software company in India.

We are in partnerships with farmers, wholesalers, agricultural cooperative societies and small holder farmers in Nigeria as direct suppliers. We currently have signed partnerships with 104 food wholesalers and 121 farms in Nigeria. 

We are in partnership with Green tec capital a venture building and VC firm that invests both funds and technical know how in startups. We are working together to achieve next significant milestones for Pricepally which includes sales, company structure, market penetration and expansion etc.

We are in partnership with Motherland.earth project organized by the Katapult accelerator program to improve food systems in urban African cities by collaboration.

Pricepally is a web and app platform that enables users to buy food in bulk or share bulk food with others directly from farmers and wholesalers, making it cheaper and fresher than buying at retail.  it is essentially an online food cooperative.

Our business model is direct sales to consumer via e-commerce. We position our solution to directly benefit low and middle-income class women, who usually decide what the family eats and where to buy it. We aggregate their demands for food and connect it directly to supply from farmers and wholesalers. We make a profit on each item sold on the platform.

Farmers and wholesalers on the supply side are able to clear their inventory quicker than selling to several middle men. We give farmers direct access to food demand in urban cities.

We applying to be able to present our solution to the rest of the world, to make viable connections and learn from others in the MIT network.

We need help with funding, we need advise and strategic partnership on how to best improve on food storage systems in urban African cities. We also need expert advise on how to increase market penetration.

We will like to have access to talented individuals who can work on the Pricepally project, we need board members and advisors who are experienced and well connected to help in achieving our vision.

We need marketing experts who can further increase our visibility and growth on and offline.

We need funds and access to investors in the food tech space who will provide money and strategic insights and partnerships that will further grow the company.

Cold hub by Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu is a storage solution that can help us around food storage in Lagos.  

Our solution directly benefits women, our solution improves the lives of 

We are offering millions of women a digital platform that enables them to buy foodstuff for the family delivered to their doorstep. We are economically and personally empowering women because we help them spend less and save more money and she doesn't stress herself to the market anymore.

Pricepally is a for-profit solution that has the potential to significantly impact millions of lives. We will invest the funds in further improving the solution, we will invest in our technology, marketing and advertising,storage and distribution as well as hiring talent. We will use the funds to meet our next set of KPI's.