Obinna Umeh was 22 when a $50,000 contract with a U.S. marketing agency fell through because he could not access the company’s payment platform, a setback that later shaped his decision to build a workforce platform helping African professionals get hired, managed and paid by global clients.
In a recent interview with Business Insider Africa, Obinna Umeh, the Nigerian founder and CEO of Growwr, said a $50,000 contract with a Washington, D.C.-based marketing agency collapsed when he was 22, despite the client’s willingness to proceed and an established working relationship.
According to him, the contract fell through at the payment stage because the agency’s platform required a U.S. Social Security Number, which he did not have, and no alternative arrangement was available.
“Nobody questioned my ability or whether I could deliver the work,” Umeh said. “I lost the opportunity because of a system I had no control over. That was the moment I understood that talent and hard work matter, but access matters too.”
That experience later shaped Growwr, a Nigerian-founded workforce platform that helps companies hire, manage and pay talent across borders, and now says it serves more than 100,000 talent profiles, over 2,000 clients, has completed more than 6,000 jobs and enabled over $2 million in cross-border payouts.
