Entrepreneurship World Cup has awarded US $100,000 in cash and US $850,000 in programme assistance to Chooya, a Nigerian e-commerce business located in Aba.
Chooya was one of 100 finalists chosen from 200,000 applicants for the Entrepreneurship World Cup, organized by Misk Global Forum and Global Entrepreneurship Network. Chooya was founded in 2019 by Igwe Uguru as a “search engine for African traditional markets” and has been bootstrapped since its inception (GEN).
The startup won a US$100,000 national prize as well as a US $850,000 global prize in the competition and plans to use the funds for product development, marketing, and human resources to reach out to businesses that are having trouble acquiring new customers and assist them in digitising word-of-mouth marketing.
Chooya’s “addds” word-of-mouth mobile application aims to assist 5,000 businesses to increase sales by three times by the third quarter of next year.
“I was inspired to digitize word-of-mouth marketing by my experience helping my 72-year-old father at his local business. Without any form of paid commercial or social media ads, I watched the customers grow every single month through word-of-mouth marketing and helped my father train all his five children in the high institution. We are very excited about Chooya’s future and the impact we are set to make considering the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, especially on small businesses,” said Uguru.
