Luther Lawoyin is the CEO of PricePally, a digital food co-operative based in Gbagada, Lagos. As an entrepreneur with a passion for social impact, he leverages on technology to build innovative business models and platforms that solves economic challenges in Africa. Lawoyin proves that PricePally is not just any profit-making venture, it is one that is out to save lives and meet the challenges people face with accessing food items at affordable prices especially with the Federal Government’s lockdown directive as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. He shares his vision with JOY NGWOLO in this interview.
What’s the idea behind PricePally?
The idea behind PricePally came when I got married. My wife keeps record of our expenses, so three months into our marriage, she showed me an account of how much we had spent and the expenses were so high that we had to look for ways to cut cost. We met someone who buys food for people and connects people to buy at wholesale price and she invited us to join her, we saw that the economics was good and we could save. We improved on it to include a technology layer which we now have as the website and an app.
CEO, PricePally
What makes your business stand out from others?
That would be the technology layer that we put into it and the fact that people can connect with one another to buy food items, it is a social e-commerce kind of thing like a digital food co-operative so those are the things that the normal e-commerce companies do not have. We also direct access to farmers and wholesalers, so it’s not like we buy from retailers.
Who are your clients?
Our clients are basically women, mothers, people who decide on what the family would eat, and where to buy them. Some of our clients are also procurement officers for hotels, restaurants, eateries and all of that. So our business is basically business-to-consumer and business-to-business.
How do you get your goods?
We get our goods from farmers and wholesalers
What is your area of coverage?
Our area of coverage are urban cities, we are starting with Lagos, next we will be moving to Abuja or Port-Harcourt, we will also be going to other cities and African countries, cities where it is difficult to get food because of different issues
What are the challenges you face with running the business?
There are different challenges ranging from logistics, procurement, perfecting the customer’s order, electricity problems and things like that but that is why we are in business, it is to solve problems and make our consumers happy.
What is your philosophy for running your business?
You should love what you do and if you love what you do, you would do it very well and that you can bring comfort to people through your services. Because we love what we do, we help our customers solve the problem of going out to the market to get food items and get their orders down as they want it.
What are the steps to take in order to benefit from this digital food co-operative platform?
Register and shop on PricePally.com or download the app
Talking about the Coronavirus pandemic, in what ways do you think the present situation in the country will affect your business, what role does your service play in the scheme of things?
We are still helping people buy food because one effective way to combat the pandemic is for people to self-isolate and social distancing. We have a partnership with CC Hub which helps us to continue to help people buy food even during these hard times such that people are able to stay in their homes while we help them do what they need to do and in that way we are helping to reduce the spread of the virus.
