The founder, Interra Networks, David Onu, tells EVEREST AMAEFULE about his call centre outsourcing business that employs 150 people and his early entrepreneurial drive
How did you get into technology outsourcing industry business?
I got into this business by accident. We had challenges in our US operations; we needed to offer good quality customer service. We operate calling cards in the US. Our customer base was growing but we could not expand customer service the right way. Everybody was saying outsource to India or Pakistan. We checked the price and found that it was not that cheap as everybody made us to believe.
At that time, we had opened a partnership discussion with the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited. And then we thought since English is spoken in Nigeria, what was happening in India could also happen in Nigeria. We came into Nigeria, unfortunately, NITEL had started going down. We also realised that new operators had come and we could get the same service from some other telecoms operators. We needed E1 lines – a very high capacity telecommunications line. When I spoke to MTN, initially, they did not want to give us service. E1 lines were treated like gold. We had to make a business case to MTN before they could give us service. Now the prices have come down compared to what they were then. We got the connectivity from them. We now started making arrangement for bigger Internet connection and bigger Internet speed.
The business grew from there. It was not the clear-cut plan. The first focal point was to build a call centre in Nigeria to support our business in the US. We later realised that it was such an opportunity. We are realised that Nigerians had begun to demand for customer service – with the banks, telecoms companies and the rest. We said, today, every Nigerian has a phone or access to a phone, if we can create a platform where these people can actually call in and have their questions answered and problems solved; maybe, it will help these companies have better relationships with their customers.
What impact have you recorded since then?
We realised that there was an opportunity to push this into the Nigerian market. So when we started in 2007/2008, the word: 'call centre,' was hardly known. When people talked about outsourcing, they usually meant outsourcing security or cleaning services. It hardly meant outsourcing technology services. Today, I am happy that call centre and outsourcing are no longer unknown words in Nigeria. Today, you see organisations, even government establishments putting up request for proposals for call centres. This means that some good work has been done, not just by us but by stakeholders in the industry in creating the necessary awareness and education in the market. We are still trying to get people to demand for more service. We know that it is impossible for people to physically go to the offices to demand for service. It may not be convenient. But everybody has a phone or access to phone, even in my village. We need to bring service closer to the people and the phone is the fastest way to do that. ODIN has since been born. ODIN is the Outsourcing Development Initiative of Nigeria. It is charged with promoting Nigeria as an outsourcing destination. It is an initiative in partnership with the World Bank.
How do you assess the outsourcing industry in the country?
What people don't realise is that outsourcing is the fastest way to create jobs. When we started, we were less than 10 people in this place. Today, we have well over 150 people working here. And we are servicing only few clients now. Imagine when more private and public sector organisations see the need for call centres. The good thing is that they are entry-level jobs. So, all our young men and women leaving the universities and polytechnics can leave school and reasonably expect to have where they can start their lives. This is missing in Nigeria. Many people leave school today and they don't know where they are going to. It is so sad that many people leave school today and they believe that except they know somebody, they can't get a job. It shouldn't be like that but you cannot blame them. The problem is that there is no clear demand for jobs. There is a clear supply but there is no clear demand. How many open positions do we really have? But every year, we are graduating 100,000 students. So there is need for the government and the private sector to create new markets and new sectors that can absorb people. It cannot be the traditional sectors alone. Before 2001, the telecoms industry did not exist. But since then, it has been responsible for providing a lot of jobs, directly and indirectly. The same thing applies here.
How did you get into entrepreneurship?
People that know me will tell you that I have always been an entrepreneur. I did not come from a very privileged background. My father died when I was very young. I was eight or nine then and you know widows are not given the best treatment in Nigeria. Life was difficult for the family. In the early part of my secondary school, my mother would make things I would carry them to the market to sell. Then she opened a small shop and I would go and stay there after school. It was from there that my interest in doing business got kindled.
As I grew up, I started doing all sorts of things. At a point, I would go to Oron to buy crayfish and bring to Enugu and sell. Some people used to ask if I was in school. Then I graduated to yam. I would go to Oturkpo, buy yam and sell. So, I have always had that entrepreneurial drive. It was great because it helped me to sustain my family. At a very early stage, I started providing for my family. When I felt I had graduated, I had to buy an Okada (commercial motorcycle). I used to fight with the Okada man about his daily delivery. That was where my foundation started.
When I got to Canada, I was fortunate to work for a company, Bell Canada, which was like Nigeria's NITEL. They had one of the best education programmes. Once you are a worker, you get exposed to a lot of training. I started there as a network engineer and I started to get more knowledge about telecommunications. I was more of a technical person. I had a boss that time, Obie from Trinidad & Tobago, who saw me as a smart and ambitious young man and advised me to go into sales. Canada was not overtly racist but as a black, you knew you were a black man. He said once you are in sales, the colour of your skin does not matter anymore. You are judged by what comes in through you. That was the best advice I ever got from anybody. When I got into sales, I send what he spoke about. People that do technology tend to focus more on technology; not on the utility.
I worked for Bell for about five years. Sometime in 2000, I decided to leave. Incidentally, Interra Networks was not my first company. My first company was iKobo. It was a money transfer company focusing on immigrants. The idea was to challenge Western Union and offer a more streamlined service through the net. I started the company with another Nigerian, Emeka Ohuche. Unfortunately, we were very young. We had white people that came in and put in money but they ran the company the wrong way. We had to leave.
When we left the company, I looked at all my experience in iKobo. I was in charge of marketing and I travelled a lot. We targeted immigrants. What do immigrants do? They travel home, they send money home and they make telephone calls. So we wanted to offer them service around these areas. When I left iKobo, I met another partner, Emeka Okafor. We decided to offer services to immigrants, especially calling cards service. So we started Interra Networks in 2004. We offered our first product called Peezy in 2005. You can buy the cards in shops but you can also access the service from the Internet. We are still trying to incorporate the money transfer part of iKobo into it.
What else will you like to do?
At some point, I will like to teach entrepreneurship in the university. We have to accept the fact that not everybody will get job. Some must be entrepreneurs but many are afraid. They are afraid of failure. They don't know that failure is part of the experience. Some think a lot of money is required. I believe that money follows a good plan. So we have to find ways of teaching young people in the universities about entrepreneurship. I am not motivated by making money but by impact. Nothing gives me more joy than giving all young people an opportunity in life.
