From Finance, Law and Entertainment to Consumer Technology: The couple behind WinsGalore

When Kunle and Tracy Adesuyi decided to build WinsGalore, neither was entering the business world for the first time. Between them were careers spanning finance, corporate strategy, fundraising, entertainment, law, governance, risk management and regulatory compliance.

What neither had previously done was build a consumer competition technology company. Yet it was an idea encountered thousands of kilometres from Nigeria that would eventually bring those experiences together.

During their time in England, Kunle and Tracy became familiar with platforms through which consumers could compete for aspirational prizes using formats incorporating skill and judgement. The concept interested them, but the more important observation came when they considered the Nigerian market.

Opportunities to win significant prizes in Nigeria were overwhelmingly associated with betting, lotteries, random draws and chance. They began asking whether there was room for a different proposition.

That question ultimately became WinsGalore.

The company is building a digital platform through which consumers can compete for cars, cash, premium electronics, lifestyle products and vacation packages through skill-based competition formats but behind the consumer-facing proposition sits a founding team whose backgrounds bring together two important sides of the business: commercial discipline and consumer entertainment on one hand, and law, governance and regulatory compliance on the other.

Before becoming Founder and CEO of WinsGalore, Kunle Adesuyi spent more than 15 years building a career across finance, corporate strategy, treasury, investment and executive management. His career included senior roles at FMDQ OTC Securities Exchange and Sankore Global Investments before he became President and Group Chief Financial Officer of AFEX Global Holdco.

At AFEX, his responsibilities extended beyond conventional financial reporting into treasury, corporate finance, strategy, audit, compliance, technology and innovation. Among the milestones in his career was leading a fundraising round that secured $26.5 million from British International Investment to support growth in Africa's agricultural sector.

But Kunle's professional interests have not been confined to institutional finance. He is also a Co-founder of TAP Music, a Nigerian record label whose roster has included successful recording artiste Spyro. The music business gave Kunle exposure to a very different commercial environment — one built around entertainment, audiences, culture, talent and consumer attention.

That experience becomes particularly relevant to WinsGalore.

While his finance career taught him how to think about capital, governance, risk and sustainable growth, his involvement in music provided another perspective: understanding that consumer businesses cannot be built on spreadsheets alone.

They also have to capture attention and create experiences people care about.

“Finance teaches you to ask whether a business is sustainable, whether the economics work and whether you're managing risk properly,” Kunle says. “Entertainment teaches you something different — people have to feel something. They have to be excited enough to engage, talk about it and come back. With WinsGalore, those two worlds come together.”

That combination influences how he describes the company. WinsGalore isn't intended simply to be a website that awards prizes. The ambition is to build an entertainment and lifestyle brand around the experience of competing and winning.

The prize attracts attention, the competition creates engagement, and the stories surrounding winners create entertainment. That is a proposition Kunle understands from both sides of his professional life.

Tracy Adesuyi brings a different professional lens. A Nigerian-trained lawyer with more than eight years of experience, she holds an LL.M. in International Commercial Law from the University of Sussex.

Her career has covered corporate and commercial law, contract negotiation, governance, risk and regulatory compliance. She also previously served as Chief Compliance Officer at The Wells Carlton Hotel & Apartments, where her responsibilities included regulatory compliance, risk management and AML/fraud functions.

At WinsGalore, that experience influences how she thinks about building the company.

“When you're creating something new, particularly something involving consumers, payments and prizes, you cannot treat governance and compliance as things you introduce after you've grown,” Tracy says. “They need to be part of how the business is designed.”

That gives the founding team an interesting division of expertise. 

Kunle approaches WinsGalore through the lenses of strategy, economics, finance, entertainment, and scale.

Tracy brings law, governance, compliance and consumer confidence. Both share responsibility for the company's larger vision.

Kunle serves as Founder and CEO, while Tracy is Co-founder and Executive Director.

WinsGalore also reflects a broader phenomenon among Nigerian professionals who spend time abroad and return with ideas they believe can be adapted to local realities, but adaptation is the important word. The founders aren't attempting simply to reproduce a British platform in Nigeria. Consumer purchasing power is different, Payment behaviour is different, Regulation is different, Cultural perceptions surrounding competitions and winning are different, and the economic significance of certain prizes can be dramatically different.

A vehicle, for example, can represent considerably more than convenience to a Nigerian winner. It can be an asset, an income opportunity or the fulfilment of an ambition that might otherwise require years of saving.

That reality influences how WinsGalore thinks about prizes.

For Kunle and Tracy, WinsGalore represents something of a professional second act. One has spent much of his career managing money, institutions, entertainment and corporate strategy. The other has spent hers navigating law, regulation, governance and risk. Now they are attempting to apply those disciplines to something much more consumer-facing: the possibility of winning.

Whether WinsGalore succeeds will ultimately depend on far more than the founders' CVs Consumers will determine that, but their backgrounds reveal something important about the company they are attempting to build. Behind the cars, cash, holidays and competitions is an ambition to create an institution capable of surviving beyond the excitement of its prizes, and perhaps that is where finance and law meet entertainment:

Someone still has to build the structure that makes the excitement possible.

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