Jennifer Onyebuagu is the chief commercial officer (CCO) at Voriancorelli, an agritech matching company that leverages technology to transform Africa’s agricultural sector.
She is a business development manager and sales professional with over 10 years specialised experience growing and managing businesses.
Onyebuagu possesses interdisciplinary experience, having worked in the financial, technology, network marketing, and agriculture sectors.
She is a venture builder and has pioneered several businesses. She is reputed for providing last-mile solutions in the world of sales and marketing.
At some point in her career, she pivoted into financial technology and the start-up space, going through all the different stages of its life cycle.
She thereafter moved into the agritech space and in-between them launched three businesses. She served as the senior implementation manager for the ‘Connect to Work’ project under the auspices of Young Africa Works sponsored by the Mastercard Foundation.
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Over her decade-long career, she has worked with a broad range of organisations from start-ups to enterprises and cultivated multiple market segments from the base of the pyramid, all the way upstream.
“With all these wonderful experiences I have been privileged to have, I can say that a wealth of venture-building experience was delivered to me,” she says.
A thoroughbred professional, she was attracted to Voriancorelli because the company is involved in the business of the future.
She says the business of agriculture is very critical for the survival of any nation, especially when it is intertwined with technology.
“Agriculture contributes 40 percent of Nigeria’s GDP and employs 40 percent of the working population and yet with regard to technology the sector is lagging,” she says.
“We have seen how technology is being used to revolutionise and transform sectors – Uber for transportation; Airbnb for home rental, and Amazon for online shopping,” she says.
“Agriculture is still obscure, and we believe that with the help of technology, Voriancorelli can do for our sector what these aforementioned companies do for theirs,” she further says.
Onyebuagu has taken Voriancorelli to a whole new level as a chief commercial officer.
She explains that since the company’s official launch in December of 2020, it has consummated trade valued at N1 billion in gross market value on its platform, signed up some of the largest processors, and is building a network of 1,000 credible suppliers.
“In that same time, we have reached terminal stages of closing out our apex seed round, as well as being listed on a certain commodity exchange,” she discloses.
She says the secrets of the success of her commercial activities are focus, passionate team, and God’s grace.
“The secret behind all of these great milestones in this short while are the razor-sharp focus, a deeply experienced and passionate team, and ultimately God’s grace.”
As a woman, she has faced several challenges, being in sectors dominated by men, but she remains undaunted. “I have personally never acknowledged the gender glass ceiling in my career and anything in my life,” she says.
“I always bring 100 percent to the table even beyond my workspace. I believe that women have carved out opportunities for themselves and are stepping up to the plate,” she notes.
“We have the first female Black vice president of the United States and the head of the World Trade Organization is not just a woman, but a Nigerian.
“My perspective is that for any role you are given, whether on the commercial side or otherwise as a person, there needs to be a deep understanding of the outcome the organisation wants and the things you need to get there.”
She has always been part of big business deals. Her previous company ran one of the largest programmes in agriculture, reaching over 14 million farmers and providing access to technology, input, and subsidy.
This initiative was carried out in partnership with the Nigerian government which was the sponsor (alongside other key stakeholders).
After the project, her former company designed a solid platform to make projects sustainable.
She has also been part of several big deals that ran into millions of dollars.
“Truthfully, I have had quite a few big ones edging towards millions of dollars, but incidentally, the one that stands out to me was not necessarily the highest numerically speaking,” she explains.
“It was closing a deal in which I singlehandedly got eight banks to agree to give me a total of 3000 POS devices at no cost. The devices were delivered to financial agents and went on to process over $150 million in gross payment value annually. This stands out to me because of the number of jobs created and their role in supporting community-level transactions during the pandemic,” she says.
The deal helped to facilitate financial inclusion and save lives at a time when the world was on lockdowns.
She says her wins are more inclined to social impact than anything else.
She explains that there are a lot of fantastic companies doing great things and tackling a lot of challenges at different levels of the value chain, whether it is in primary production, aggregation, processing, and logistics, among others.
However, she admits that Voriancorelli provides market linkage, information symmetry, and transparency to redefine the space.
“This gives trust and confidence to banks and other financial institutions to invest in the sector,” she notes.
Onyebuagu says that one notable challenge she has encountered in the course of her career is the difficulty of finding well-seasoned talents whose hearts are loyal to the vision.
“Another challenge has to be extreme individualism where people want to work in silos instead of in partnership towards the overarching corporate goals,” she states.
She points out that navigating the barriers in the Nigerian landscape is also a big challenge.
When asked why many businesses in Nigeria, especially SMEs, fail within the first three years, she gives three reasons.
“The first is a lack of a coherent, scalable strategy. Second, the lack of well-defined business processes, and finally, not having the right people to execute the vision.”
She urges entrepreneurs not to think that finance or funding is their biggest headache.
She says, “Funding is not necessarily the biggest challenge. Funding follows transparency and that is something that we have been able to demonstrate through our seed round and listing.”
She explains that people struggle to get finances because they are unable to demonstrate what they have been done and how the funds will be utilised for returns.
