How Ikenna Discovered His Business Idea and Turned it Into a $10.6 million Backed Releaf
Ikenna Nzewi and his team started Releaf to facilitate the availability of high-quality raw materials needed by FMCGs and manufacturers. Releaf is an Agrictech company that develops proprietary hardware and software solutions to drive large scale processing and availability of PKO for manufacturers in Africa. Ikenna Nzewi (CEO), Isaiah Udotong (CGO), and Uzoma Ayogu (CTO), started Releaf as a marketplace by visiting more than 20 States in Nigeria, buying and selling various agricultural commodities to get clear understanding of how specific value chains function and to investigate opportunities to develop technology to catalyse their industrialisation. Their discovery that there are big factories in Nigeria that are using only about 30% of their capacity, due to inability to get access to high-quality raw material, such as PKO, and that many of the companies rely on imported raw material, inspired the team to pivot the di...