Opay Nigeria appoints Olu Akanmu as Co-CEO

Chinese-owned African Tech startup, Opay has appointed Veteran industry professional and former FCMB Executive Director for Retail Banking, Olu Akanmu as the new president and co-CEO of its Nigerian division.

According to the mobile money payment giant, Olu Akanmu will work alongside the current leadership team to guide Opay Nigeria towards attaining all of the company’s goals and objectives.

Olu Akanmu, who has a previous background in the banking and telecommunications sectors, brings more than 20 years of corporate leadership to this role.

Before his appointment as Opay Nigeria president, Olu Akanmu had held the position of Executive Director for Retail Banking at FCMB for more than eight years.

Prior to this role, he had also held the position of senior vice president/Divisional head of retail banking at the same FCMB.

His background in the Nigerian banking sector may provide him with an advantage in leading the fintech firm, but he also has extensive experience in the Nigerian telecommunication services industry.

According to his impressive employment record, he had been the chief marketing officer for Airtel Nigeria, a position he held briefly between 2012 and 2013.

His immersion into this role was just shortly after he moved on from a five-year experience as the Managing Director for retail and consumer banking at the now-defunct Bank PHB.

He had also, for more than five years, held the position of General Manager for consumer marketing at MTN, shortly after leaving Insights Communication as their client service director.

Olu Akanmu has a rich educational background that spans many years within and beyond the shores of the country. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Pharmacy from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. He also bagged an MBA from Lagos State University. He had also attended the University of Witwatersrand and Edinburgh Business School, where he achieved a distinction in the Management Advancement Program and a post-graduate certificate in Business Research, respectively.

A multi-industry retail and consumer business expert, Olu has, over the years, shown consistent strong adaptive skills to cross to new territories / industry contexts and deliver excellent results. He is also a thought-leader in Strategy, Marketing and Management whose articles and pubic presentations are highly-sought in the consumer business community.

A transformational leader, an enterprise digital transformation leader, strong galvanizer of people and organization builder, Olu Akanmu’s appointment as president of Opay Nigeria follows a series of rocky and difficult times that the company had to face doing business in Nigeria.

OPay launched into the Nigerian market in May 2019. Along with its fintech service, the company also launched a bike-hailing service, ORide. The company would eventually expand its service into various other verticals.

It expanded to include OList (classified ads), OFood (food delivery), OKash (loans), OCar (ride-hailing), OBus (bus-hailing), and OWealth (investments).

Opay has significantly altered the ride-hailing industry just one year into the game.

However, in July 2020, the company had to shut down some of its business units to focus only on financial technology services. That was partly due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the Lagos State Government’s policy prohibiting commercial motorcycles in much of the Lagos metropolitan area. All of the company’s ride-hailing platforms (ORide and OCar), as well as OExpress, its delivery service, had to be put on hold.

The fintech company has since rebounded from its misfortunes, achieving unicorn status in August after raising an impressive $400 million a funding round led by Softbank.

Opay’s current valuation of $2 billion is higher than its predicted valuation of $1.5 billion. The company claims it will continue to focus on assisting emerging nations in their economic development.