Pioneering Ad Engagement And Empowering Users With Lohli: Demilade Olaosun
A visionary leader, Demilade Olaosun, is the Founder and CEO of Lohli, an AdTech startup based in Africa that empowers its users with rewards for activities carried out online. With over 16 years of experience and background in law, Demilade decided to venture into the business landscape during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Passionate to bridge the gap between digital opportunities for Africans or Nigerians, as compared to other regions, Demilade found Lohli. With this platform, users can earn rewards, connect with people of similar interests, purchase basic necessities with enough to save, and gift other people by simply watching advertisements and completing surveys. With his resilience and commitment to change, Demilade Olaosun is bringing a fresh wave to the advertisement ecosystem by benefiting the people to whom the advertisements are targeted.
Early Life And Background
Demilade Olaosun is the Founder and CEO of Lohli, the first African platform that compensates internet users for time and resources expended online. He is a legal practitioner with over 16 years post qualification experience. Demilade graduated as the Best Student in the Faculty of Law, University of Lagos in 2008, winning several academic prizes, and eventually proceeded to the Nigerian Law School, after which he was admitted into the Nigerian Bar as a Barrister and Solicitor in 2009.
Growing up in Ilesa, Osun State of Nigeria, as the first of three children in a middle-class Nigerian family, Demilade has faced his share of challenges. “My Parents, despite several challenges, even when it meant they could not afford new clothes, or even buy a car, ensured that my sisters and I got the best education in our town and ultimately in the Country – a sacrifice for which I am eternally grateful,” Demilade reflects.
Spark Behind Building Lohli
Demilade has always been involved in the technology space as a lawyer, advising startups and providing transaction support. However, it was in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when he decided to venture as a founder. The pandemic hit Demilade hard as well because the majority of his corporate savings were in his law firm and his personal savings as a principal partner in a new office space for the firm with the hope of recouping their investments through revenue from the practice. He adds, “Unexpectedly, Covid-19 struck, and commercial activities in the whole world ground to a halt. We could not even use the office we had spent so much money putting together until about ten months after we completed the construction. This investment, coupled with the harshness of the pandemic, launched me into unforeseen financial constraints.”
During this period, he started to research sources of passive income and soon realized that companies existed in Europe and America that paid people for watching advertisements and completing surveys, but these products were unavailable to Nigerians or Africans. “I decided to build Lohli to bridge this gap, by making sure that the product is deeply rooted in Afrocentrism. The simplified expression of our primary goal is that starting with Nigeria, people will be able to purchase basic necessities with enough to save and gift other people just by watching advertisements and completing surveys,” Demilade adds.
Key Elements In Building Tech Products
The development of technology products is generally a tough call, and Demilade believes that irrespective of the technical complexities of each product, every stage of development, from idea conceptualization, preparation of Product Requirements Documents, fundraising, and more, is quite crucial. However, Demilade holds that building a team that fits and is sufficiently motivated to bring one’s vision to life is very critical as well as a challenging part, especially for African founders.
He mentions, “We have seen startups that raised funding fizzle out from either a corporate culture that does not retain talents or team members losing faith in the vision. The current brain drain arising from several young and talented Nigerians seeking greener pastures outside the Country does not make assembling the right team for startups easier. Closely following this is access to funding. It is expensive to build, maintain, and scale technology products. You need to hire the best hands and invest massively in marketing and promotion, alongside having a conducive environment for staff to thrive. All of these require adequate financing.”
Unfortunately, with the steady year-on-year fall in the volume of investments, African startups are facing a hard time accessing funding. “Clearly, the African tech market is abundantly rich in ideas, innovation, skills, talents, and human capital, but accessing funding is a very hard nut to crack,” Demilade shares.
Staying Ahead Of The Curve
Similar products exist in the US, UK, and across Europe, but Demilade Olaosun has built Lohli to be a unique product targeted primarily towards Nigerians and Africans. “The Lohli experience is not limited to earning through watching advertisements, we have also created a whole Tribe-based model of interaction,” shares Demilade.
The Lohli Tribe is a community of people interested in interacting on specific subjects that catch their fancy and interest them. Demilade collapsed the entire business and economic ecosystem into thirteen tribes, such as tech and telecommunication, FMCG, Faith-Based and Non-Profit, Arts and Entertainment, Banking and Finance, and others, to create a social interaction environment where people can interact, give reliable reviews and informed commentaries in their respective Tribes.
He even mentions, “For instance, if a user is looking to buy an electric vehicle and then wants to sample the opinion of other people on the best choice, they can start that conversation in the Transportation and Logistics Tribe and Tribe members will participate in the interactions. Conversations are streamlined to specific areas of interest, giving users the prerogative to select their preferred Tribe and also effectively control the conversations that they see and participate in.”
The Lohli Tribe offers an apparently different system from what is obtainable on other social media platforms, where users are bombarded with different content and information, disregarding whether they have an interest in such content or not. When users earn Shekels on the platform, which is Lohli’s currency of exchange, they can use it in different aspects, from placing bets, withdrawing to their bank accounts, and paying their bills to send them as gifts. “We are currently developing the Lohli Trade Centre, where advertisers and other sellers will be able to sell their products directly on the Platform and watchers would be able to use their Shekels to make purchases,” Demilade adds.
Adaptability Amidst Tech-Driven Innovations
Ensuring that a huge advertising budget culminates in actual knowledge of the Adverts and interactions by their target audience stands as a huge challenge for advertisers. Demilade believes digital advertisements have always been one-sided as there remains minimal assurance that these advertisements will be engaged with. In fact, a lot of internet users consider digital advertisements to be intrusive, and a lot of people install ad blockers on their devices.
However, Lohli solves this problem. By taking the ads to the people who are more than excited to interact with them, Lohli is changing the entire scenario. “Before anyone can earn on Lohli, they must watch the ad till the end without the option to fast forward or speed up the content. Then they are expected to answer questions set by the advertisers themselves to test their understanding of the ad they have just watched. Watchers are only able to earn when they answer these questions correctly. We provide verifiable data and analytics to our advertisers, and this can be accessed in real-time,” Demilade explains.
An Empathetic Leader: Demilade Olaosun’s Vision
Lohli’s founder, Demilade Olaosun has built an excellent reputation as a leader among his present and previous employees and workmates. Sharing his thoughts on this, Demilade reflects, “One of my greatest ambitions in life is to help people live their best lives. Be it my staff, colleagues, neighbors, and members of the public, I am committed to making life easy for every human that God counted me worthy to come across. I believe leadership should be deeply rooted in love and empathy. As the ultimate biblical injunction is for us to love other people as ourselves, so it is crucial for leadership whether in corporate organizations, politics, or anywhere else.”
Corporate leaders need to genuinely love the people who work with them and also have their best interests at heart. This way, the leaders will put in place systems that empower their staff and encourage them to thrive. He further adds, “When your staff feel valued and respected, they will treat your customers right and this will culminate in huge success for the organization.”
Aspirations For Lohli
Aside from profit-making, Demilade believes his supreme goal and aspiration for Lohli is wealth redistribution. Being very particular about the lasting effect Lohli has on Africans, starting with Nigeria, he aspires everyone in the advertisement ecosystem to benefit, with primary beneficiaries being the consumers, the people whom the advertisements are targeted.
Emphasizing his visions for the company and his community, Demilade mentions, “We want people to be able to earn passive income enough to afford basic necessities and set saving goals simply by watching advertisements and interacting online. Our mission is quite simple. If brands will advertise, then the consumers must derive direct benefit from the ad spend.”
Message To Readers
“I always like to say that not to know is bad and not to wish to know is worse. We must constantly chase knowledge and ensure that our experiences and the knowledge we acquire are employed to create meaningful impact in our world,” says Demilade Olaosun addressing the readers.
Follow Demilade Olaosun on LinkedIn.
Find Lohli on LinkedIn and visit their website http://www.lohli.com/
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