July 5, 2024/Proshare

Source: OpEd by Reuben Abati  

The teaching of case studies is a major part of the curriculum in most business schools – by teaching students how Nokia lost its position as the number one smart phone company at a time or why Blackberry was shunted aside, the story of Jeff Bezos and the leap of Amazon, or why Microsoft, Apple or Nvidia are today listed as three of the world’s most profitable companies, the curious student is introduced to the world of visioning, company culture, innovation, marketing, leadership and the CEO factor, entrepreneurship and why businesses fail or succeed. There are many of such books on the bookshelves from the Western world: company profiles, CEO profiles, but here in Nigeria there is a scarcity of such narratives. 

African businessmen for the most part run their businesses like secret and private empires, few are willing to tell their stories, fewer still would open up their records for scrutiny or allow an investigative researcher to unveil their methods and aspirations – what if other people steal the ideas? What if some of the star performers in the team are lured away with better offers? What if hidden “company secrets” are unveiled, and indeed in an environment where the entrepreneur is part of a complex web of societal contradictions, secrecy, or its euphemism, “discreetness” remains part of the culture.

I was therefore attracted to the openness suggested in the title of this book by Tosin Adeoti, Beyond Profit: How a Nigerian Company Built A Culture of Credibility, which tells the story of Proshare: an online financial services platform. Proshare offers a combination of news reporting, research and analysis of capital markets and corporate financials, financial advisory services, and rigorous, dispassionate review of developments in the financial sector. The company was established in 2006 by Olufemi Awoyemi, a member of the National Institute (mni), Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, researcher, analyst, a thought-leader and simply an entrepreneur. This book is the nearly two decades story of Proshare, from its humble beginnings to its emergence as a leading player in the financial space in Nigeria, with a growing global reputation. The operative word in the sub-title is “How? Teachers of leadership and entrepreneurship should find this book a worthy addition to business case study analysis. It is an act of courage for Femi Awoyemi and the Proshare team to offer their company’s biography in such great detail, and an act of creativity on Tosin Adeoti’s part to find a story worth telling. More books of this nature need to be written, and African CEOs should be encouraged to tell stories to prevent the kind of speculations that we have witnessed in the absence of concrete narratives about the founding of businesses, mergers and acquisitions, and company culture. 

Beyond Profit is primarily a book about leadership, divided into Three parts, in a total of 14 Chapters and 364 pages. The first three chapters focus on Olufemi Awoyemi, his beginnings in the humbler parts of Lagos, his parents – how they influenced him, particularly his father, his transition to the world of work and the experiences that shaped him. CEOs are products of their backgrounds and experiences, of their environment and like the rest of us, they are shaped by this in terms of their relationship with others in the work place. Femi Awoyemi saw poverty at close range, and was determined to keep his head above water, but his journey to entrepreneurship was not in any shape, smooth. The story that is told is one of failures, betrayals, arrests and visits to the police station, disagreement with business partners, joblessness, and escape abroad from problems and relatives and friends seeking “black tax”, until he discovered himself first, and then discovered the idea of the same Proshare that is today a brand whose story is worth telling. In most parts, the book is inspirational: the simple lesson for the man who dreams is not to be deterred by setbacks: from the background of his experience with a failed partnership with Ayo Arowolo, a seasoned financial journalist, in the publishing of a financial newspaper called MoneyWise, Awoyemi reinvented himself with Proshare.

The second big issue for me in this book is the value of niche-manship., or perhaps originality. In business, you do not get ahead of the competition or gain market share by doing exactly what everyone else is doing. It is the differentness that sets you apart.  In designing the business model for Proshare, Awoyemi avoided the traditional financial reporting that is the operative mode in print journalism and chose the online platform at a time digital penetration in Nigeria was low and the social media was still in its infancy. But the company offered essential service: it provided financial information about the capital market to both the market and the customers, and backed that up with rigorous, informed analysis. Other sources of financial information used everyday style of reporting, Proshare adopted the language of the experts: reporting from the inside to the investment community, in a critical, independent manner. Investors worry about risks, they seek whatever intelligence that may reduce their fears and make their effort worthwhile – Proshare provided that much needed empowerment, the knowledge about the markets and fintech ecosystem. At pages 106 – 118, the author discusses the expansion of the company’s operation, through the provision of a supermarket of services including Proshare Consult, Proshare WebTV, ProshareTheAnalyst, Proshare Technology, Proshare Economy, Proshare Markets and The Proshare Foundation. The supermarket analogy is obvious enough: in a supermarket there are many shelves, creating for the owner multiple streams of income. Proshare trades in data using multiple approaches in response to the needs of the market. When businesses create a niche for themselves, they can only sustain their competitive advantage through innovation and re-invention. 

The third part of the Proshare story is its people. This book provides a detailed profile of Olufemi Awoyemi, but it is largely about the Proshare persons: the people who make up the organization, from the driver to the data analyst. Tosin Adeoti discloses in the early parts of the book that he conducted more than 100 interviews – talking to current and old staff. He not only quotes them at length, he provides a list of the Executive Board, the Management Team and the Advisory Board at pp. 16 – 17, he tells the stories of Hope, the security personnel and Akinyemi Samuel, a logistics officer at pp. 177 -180 and a detailed profile of senior members the family at pp. 180 – 223 – a family tree with Nigerian, African and Asian branches. Throughout this book, Adeoti quotes the staff, their voices are heard, and we get a picture of their commitment and dedication to a company that they consider “our company”. My favourite staff testimony is that of a staff that had been marked for disengagement. Upon getting a whiff of the news of his impending sack, the staff insisted that nobody could sack him. “It is our company,” he reportedly said. He insisted he had not yet achieved some of the things he wanted to achieve in the company. Many would consider that curious. But he was allowed to stay. And of course, there are others who have had to leave as is the natural case in the life of any company; in this regard, there is an interesting story at pp. 281 -285 about “The Curious Case of the Absconding Accountants.” 

What stands out more perhaps is the culture of values, transparency and team work that had been established over the years in the company. Culture is important in organizations. With the mentality of someone familiar with what they teach in business schools, the author stresses that what keeps the Proshare team together is the emphasis on independence, transparency and credibility. This is the source of the emphasis on “beyond profit” in the title of the book. In a capitalist world, businesses are of course interested in profit, but the prevalent trend is that businesses must have a social conscience; they must be socially responsible, and this responsibility as conceived is not only external – in this regard, Adeoti reports Proshare’s CSR during COVID- 19 at pp. 175 – 176, but CSR also speaks also to a work place culture, and the observance of ethical values. In the course of business, reports and investigations by Proshare had resulted in threats from affected parties, invitations by the police and allegations of bias, but this has not diminished the team’s commitment. The business of intelligence gathering could be risky, honest truth-telling has been dangerous since the days of Cicero, but even more than that, Awoyemi learnt early in his career, the risk and the price to be paid for “cutting corners.” Nigeria is not exactly a safe place to keep telling the truth and going about saying you do not care whose ox gored, even when the 1999 Constitution grants the mass media and owners of information platforms specific rights under Sections 22 and 39 thereof.  Nigerian watchdogs have had to learn the hard way, that what they do every day is like “walking the tight rope” as Mr. Babatunde Jose, the Daily Times legend, opined. 

All things considered, Proshare is a company in transition and this is acknowledged in two essential regards. Nigerian CEOs find it difficult to stand aside and allow their businesses to run without them, to allow room for succession and wisdom beyond the power of one. With due respect, many known brands in Nigeria are no better than one-man businesses, operating on the logic of a village corner shop. Perhaps realizing the danger that this poses to the sustainability of a business, Femi Awoyemi has since stepped aside as the CEO of Proshare with the devolution of responsibilities to Grace Adejare-Ajuwon as MD/CEO, Teslim Shitta-Bey as Executive Director/Managing Editor/Chief Economist. Awoyemi holds the position of Non-Executive Chairman. His wife Alero Awoyemi is Executive Director, Proshare Foundation. The second sense in which a transition is signposted is the company’s planned response to the changing landscape of the business. Digital inter-connectivity in Nigeria has since increased since 2006, resulting in an explosion in the fintech space, and the emergence of blogs and platforms seeking to provide the same services as Proshare. The internet space, dominated by the Gen Z, is beginning to talk more about artificial intelligence and the internet of things. Data is arguably the new oil in Nigeria but the landscape has changed requiring new tools, especially as the market is beginning to make new demands about how intelligence is gathered and data is analyzed. Confronted with this new disruption, Proshare is now looking into the future, with what it calls “Project Digital.” 

Two questions though: How did Proshare’s decision to focus on an online platform communication during a season of low digital penetration in Nigeria contribute to its competitive advantage? And in what ways did the company culture at Proshare, emphasizing values, transparency and teamwork impact its growth and reputation in the financial sector? Nonetheless, this book leaves the reader with great expectations about the future and the possibilities therein. But for now, Beyond Profit documents the company’s journey to date. This remains an unfolding story as we all await the future and the transition here promised. The present offering by Tosin Adeoti is worth reading. It is a beautiful, engaging read, and the publishers – ScribeTribe – have done a good job of presenting it in a reader-friendly manner.  Entrepreneurs and teachers of business and leadership will find the book beneficial.