Rabiu Musah fits the part of the under-30 CEO in 2017 comfortably. He is the co-founder and CEO of the online service marketplace, Asuqu.com. Before Asuqu, he had put his software development and engineering skills to use in a bid to provide technological solutions in sub-Saharan Africa.

He was part of a hackathon team that built a pre to post-natal care application that they hoped would complement the global efforts to reduce infant and child mortality in Africa. As if there were any doubts about his young and tech-savvy CEO status, he met up with TECHnically at a small studio on the mainland looking like he’d just left the gym to talk about the most technical and socially enterprising intersections between the creative industry in Nigeria and the technology using his start-up, Asuqu, as the case study.

Enjoy.

TECHnically: Hello Rabiu. Thank you for doing this. Can you tell us a little about your company, Asuqu?

Rabiu Musah: Asuqu.com is a subsidiary of the GutsHaven Company which we started to provide technology-based solutions to individuals and organisations across the sub-Saharan Africa. However, sometime in 2014, we realised that the creative industry in Nigeria was rapidly getting saturated with great talents who managed to account for about 5% of the country’s GDP. the parent company was already involved in providing solutions so it was easy for the team to shift focus for a while on how to provide solutions tailored to that market and that’s how Asuqu was birthed. In a nutshell.

TECHnically: So what is Asuqu?

RM: Asuqu.com is an online marketplace, business directory and project management tool that works in a double-sided way to connect creative and semi-professional service providers with clients who need their services. Asuqu ensures that the customers get the service they need at the rates they can afford while the service provider completes all deliverables within the agreed time-frame and to professional standards at rates that are suitable for them.

TECHnically: How does that work? Usually, in Nigeria, people just contact their creative service providers directly and often via social media.

Rabiu Musah: That is true. But it is also true that while the creative industry is very saturated and there is an abundance of service providers to be found on social media platforms, there are only a few well-known and sought after talents and there only a handful of customers who ever get completely satisfied services they have been provided with at the rates they find affordable and a 100% money back guarantee.

What Asuqu does is not just to advertise services of creative professionals. We have a platform where the clients can log in and search the particular service that they need and also within the price range affordable for them. They can then place an order on the site for that service, for which they can either make online payment or make bank transfers which we hold in escrow until all deliverables ordered are completed. The two can then fill out an online worksheet of the progress of the project online til it is completed.

TECHnically: And all these take place within the app?

Rabiu Musa: Yes. From start to finish.

TECHnically: Do you see this leading to the standardisation of the creative service industry?

Rabiu Musah: At some point. Actually, at several points in time since we started, we have had to stop to ask ourselves the question of relevance and impact. If the solution we provide can be found elsewhere. And we have always returned to a point where we started from – that the creative industry is a player in the economy and it should get the chance to do more.

Asuqu hopes to enable the creative individual have so much confidence in his or her chosen field that they will finally boldly choose it over doing jobs they hate. This will eventually free up some space in the conventional job market while the creative service sector starts to bring much more to the table than single digits of the GDP.

We strongly believe we can create much more employment opportunities out of the abundance of creative talents we have in the country.

To do this, we believe we need to shake and wake the talents. Apart from the in-app measures we already take to ensure efficiency and speedy delivery, we have lined up the “Freelancers’ clinic” where our team will have one on one sessions with the service providers we host in order to help them understand how to better themselves at their craft in a way that makes them even more indispensable to the customers.

TECHnically: Tell us more about the job creation drive, please?

Rabiu Musah:  We started by considering the rough statistics available in Nigeria which produces shows that we produce close to 2 million graduates every year with jobs barely enough to reach less than 10% of those graduates. Again there is a pool of other guys close to 20 million SMES looking to get something done, companies with less than 250 employees.

However, there is a pool of other guys – close to 20 million with ideas and entrepreneurial skills looking to be taken seriously while trying to make a living.

We want to bridge that gap that never should have existed.