Olanrewaju Jay Adewole wants to take the blind trust out of African property
With Proptiva Africa, the New York and Lagos-based entrepreneur is building a startup around a simple idea: people shouldn't have to send money home on faith.
Lagos — Ask an African living abroad about building a house back home and you will often hear the same worry. The money goes out. A photo comes back, or doesn't. Someone says the roof is finished. It is hard to know for certain from thousands of miles away.
Olanrewaju "Jay" Adewole is betting that this worry can be turned into a business, and that fixing it could change how property works across the continent.
Adewole is the founder and chief executive of Proptiva Africa, a Nigerian startup that acts as an accountable team on the ground for people who own, or want to own, property in Nigeria. He works between New York and Lagos.
Proof instead of promises
Proptiva's core offer is straightforward. Its own team visits a client's site and sends dated photos and video, and clients approve quotes before they pay. Receipts, documents and updates sit in one client portal and app, available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
Its services cover property inspection, construction supervision, buying from abroad, land title verification through trusted legal professionals, and property management.
Around that service, the company has been building the wider pieces of a property network: a vendor network for the tradespeople and suppliers doing the work, and a partner network for people who refer clients.
A public record for a private problem
Its most ambitious step so far may be Proptiva Ratings, a free public directory of 3,104 Nigerian property companies. Buyers can share their experiences after a private check that the transaction was real, and companies can reply in public. No company can pay to change its rating or remove a review. The site is collecting its first reviews now.
The idea reaches past Proptiva's own customers. If buyers can see how companies have treated other buyers, good operators gain a way to stand out, and everyone in the market has a stronger reason to keep their word.
The builder
Adewole is a serial entrepreneur with more than eight years of building ventures in the United States and Africa. He holds an MBA, is a Harvard Business School alumnus, and is a certified Project Management Professional with a Six Sigma Green Belt.
He is founder and managing partner of Point of View Consulting in New York, and has taken more than five products to market, including POV CRM and The Naija Concierge, a service that helps families and travellers get things done in Nigeria. He is also a two-time award-winning business coach and author, and leads the Eli Adewole Foundation, which supports students and young entrepreneurs.
He has also built much of the technology himself. Proptiva's client app, web portal, vendor workspace and operations console were designed and shipped under his direct hand.
Starting in Lagos, looking across Africa
Proptiva is still a young company, and it is starting close to home, with Lagos as its first market. The ambition is larger: to take what it learns in Nigeria to more African cities over time.
That ambition comes with a real test. Property in Africa runs on relationships and reputation, and trust takes time to earn. A startup that promises proof has to deliver it every time, on every site.
But the prize is significant. Every family that can build at home with confidence is more likely to invest there again, and every honest builder who gets paid on proof has a reason to raise their standards. For Adewole, that is what's at stake in changing the property business in Africa: replacing blind trust with evidence.
More at proptivaafrica.com.
