More than a decade after leaving India for Africa, Deepankar Rustagi turned an initial $50,000 and later about $300,000 from family and friends into a $120 million retail supply chain platform after discovering that millions of small retailers across the continent were still invisible to the digital economy.
For many global entrepreneurs and investors, African markets present both enormous opportunity and complex operational challenges, from infrastructure gaps and currency volatility to regulation and logistics bottlenecks that have tested even some of the world’s biggest startups.
But when Deepankar Rustagi first studied Nigeria’s business environment years ago, he saw something many global founders were missing: one of the world’s largest informal trade economies operating almost entirely without digital visibility or operational efficiency.
In a recent interview with Business Insider Africa, the Indian entrepreneur recalled how a simple internet search helped shape his understanding of the opportunity in Africa.
At the time, searching online for businesses in Lagos often redirected users to Lagos in Portugal instead of Lagos, Nigeria, despite Nigeria’s commercial capital having a population above 20 million people.
