It’s now a usual scenery in Dar es Salaam to find billboards of events with one repetitive mark on them, the Nilipe logo. Nilipe aims at simplifying the payment experience for users by bringing various daily used services on its platform.
Nilipe was officially launched in 2019. As a market entry strategy, Nilipe started with transforming the event and ticketing area, “event ticketing was a forgotten space by all major actors, we thought we could start with it”, underscore one of the Nilipe founder, Mr. Japhet John. In its three years in the market you can say Nilipe has successfully become a go-to platform for ticketing solution, from night clubs, comedy show, conferences to even weddings are now using Nilipe.
Nilipe is a product of two maverick Financial Software Engineers, Japhet John (32) and Michael Shaka (32), who have become friends since age 15 during secondary school days, this went on up to university and into becoming trusted financial sector software developers.
“We always thought we should do something together as developers, and one day when we were vacationing, the Nilipe idea came, and we decided to give it a go”, explained Japhet John during our interview.
One of the most intriguing aspect of Nilipe is its seamless design and the experience of using it, which can almost left you baffled of how much resources has gotten into it.” We are involved in the design and all the technical aspect of Nilipe”, explained further Mr Japhet who is a seasoned front end engineer
Nilipe founders story is almost as intriguing as the App itself, Japhet John is one of the few people you can call epitome of excellency in Tanzania. Academically, he was the national wide best performer on his O-level education, among over 80,000 students in 2007 and also at his A-level education, and even at the University, he graduated with first class.
In 2021, Nilipe introduced another product in its App, in which various users can stream various local films as well as access various practical skills content from experts from beauty and make-up gurus to film gurus at a small payment.
Nilipe still run from founders’ investment, “we are still bootstrapping, and during this phase, we are learning so much and we don’t want to put so much pressure on the ideas and so much pressure on the growth stage, as we believe we have to pass through this stage to get ready for when we look for invest”. Nilipe founders insists on having the right investment as one of their priority going forward, “the right investor is someone who will understand our vision, dissolve in it and see the future that we want to build”, clarified Mr Japhet.
The biggest challenge that faced Nilipe on its launch was higher penetration costs, which including getting vendors to trust the new platform. So far the uptake in the market has been very rewarding to Nilipe, with over 20,000 users and thousands of tickets purchased, Nilipe is turning entrenching itself into the daily lives of the people. “Our focus now is to shift into becoming a daily used App, from now where it used the most on weekend”, clarified Mr Japhet about the future of Nilipe.
You can learn more about Nilipe in the interview below:
