Sidebrief is building resilient businesses in emerging markets

What comes to mind at the mention of ‘expansion across markets’ is usually the idea of scaling a business, and the strategies that could be applied there-in. This is a good sentiment, but one that has deeper layers when peering at the emerging markets of Africa. What Sidebrief has undertaken to do, is build resilient businesses.

Expansion could very well mean the difference between floating and drowning. The unpredictable nature of regulations in markets across Africa; with clampdowns such as the sudden ban on cryptocurrency transactions/payment facilitation in Nigeria, and the strict, lockdowns on certain countries due to random spikes in COVID-19 cases, means that businesses must constantly expand outside volatile primary markets.

Recent news about Patricia; the cryptocurrency startup from Nigeria, forced to move to Estonia in light of the ban on cryptocurrency trade in the country, is an avid example of how growth and expansion can keep the business doors open when regulators try to take away the key. Patricia’s founder is quoted as saying this to Bloomberg:

“The crypto space is heavily frowned upon by regulators so we need to be 100% compliant as we enter new markets,”

Sidebrief CEO Sidebrief CEO Sidebrief

This is a great transition into discussion on the link between compliance and business growth, as well as what that means for founders and startups across the African continent. Eunice Olopade is CEO & Co-founder and of Sidebrief; a Reg-tech startup in Africa providing effective ways of streamlining compliance for businesses in the 54 markets of the continent, has said that the current climate does not motivate founders to innovate; thereby destroying the zeal for expansion and threatening the existence of these budding industries.

In order to grow and expand past the regulatory borders of one nation to another, there is a need to understand the diverse markets of the continent’s 54 nations. And there is a greater need, to understand what starting and running a business in these varying market conditions entail.

This is where the issues are most prominent. Expansion, and by extension, survival of businesses has been limited due to a lack of understanding of what regulatory compliance looks like in these new spaces, for founders and foreign entrants alike. The manpower and expert-hiring usually required for the sake of formation in a different country could mean that these emerging businesses could crash from the costs before they get a chance to stand on their own two feet.

Sidebrief has been consistently vying ways to streamline these compliance and company formation processes, and revolutionize growth in the continent forever. Sidebrief has soundly and effectively tested the waters of a borderless business continent, leveraging user-friendly and modern technology to help automate business processes. With over 200 enterprise firms adopting their services, and a presence in a host of countries across Africa, Sidebrief has cracked the code.

The group which now works 100% remotely, following the events of the pandemic in 2020, set out to create a version of Stripe Atlas that would be relevant to the unique rules that apply to the continent. It has put in place systems to oversee and manage business formation for founders, in addition to helping them scale, not only for their growth, but for their very existence.

The reg-tech startup has been able to cover operations in Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal, Ethiopia, Morocco and Egypt among others. Sidebrief is walking the talk by expanding and scaling across Africa, with number ‘54’ in mind. With Africa’s GDP growth rate falling from 5.5 in 2020 to 3.4 in 2021, the hunger for a borderless, scalable market has pushed Sidebrief into the thick of compliance processes, taking on the role of facilitator and working to dismantle time consuming and archaic business practices.