Nigeria’s first indigenous digital cooperative society, Cloudcooperative, has won the award for the Most Indigenous Cooperative Society of the year 2022.

The award was conferred on Cloudcooperative recently in Abuja during the fourth Nigerian National Cooperative Awards organised by the Cooperative Rating & Award Society of Nigeria (CRASON).

The founder of CloudCooperative, Oluwaseun Babalola Bamiro was also recognised and honoured with an exemplary leadership award of excellence for cooperative management and development.
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Relishing the award, Bamiro recalled that watching his friend go through the stress of travelling to Ilorin, Kwara State, for a meeting of his cooperative society during the lockdown at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 inspired him to form the cooperative.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of YNorth, a leading indigenous fashion brand with over 60 outlets nationwide, told The Guardian that the experience of his friend convinced him that there was a gap to be filled in that sub-sector of the economy.

According to him, his friend had insisted that attendance at the meeting was compulsory for members, insisting that he (Bamiro) didn’t understand why.

So, he started asking himself how to create a cooperative society with flexible terms for members.

He explained: “My friend had to travel all the way from Ibadan to Ilorin to attend a meeting of the cooperative. He said it was compulsory for him to attend. I was like what other ways can one do this thing differently? I came to the conclusion that the solution was the cloud. That means that everything that can be done in the mainstream co-operative society, we have to put it online.”

So, how did he proceed? “Since then, I started researching cooperative societies around the world, learning how to make it easy for people to get access to loans and other details of their transactions. I visited several cooperative societies in the country including RCCG, UCH, Military and many others,” he recalled. 

Thereafter, he thought of a suitable name for the kind of cooperative he had in mind.

He said: “Name is the first thing you have to pick when starting a business. I started thinking of a name to use, which will not affect the word cooperative so that people can actually identify with what we are into.

“I knew that anything online is cloud so the idea was to have a cooperative on the cloud; the first of its kind. I reached out to a software company in the U.S. to write software for me for my idea and it took them about eight months lasting into the first quarter of 2021 to deliver.  The project took a toll on my team and I not to mention the several thousands of dollars it cost.

“As the tradition of cooperative societies, one needed a minimum of 10 people to start up the cooperative society before the licence can be released.  So, in July 2021, I set up Thefastlane & Co – a digital hub in Nigeria’s Silicon Valley, Yaba, Lagos.  I wrote a business plan and pitched the idea to a few of my friends, family and mentors who are well-grounded in finance, insurance, real estate and business advisory to review,” he said.

He added that in August, he was able to have 12 people on board as he sold some percentage of his stake and had Governing Council members. 

“By September 2021, I had my first meeting as the chairman of the Governing Council of Cloud Cooperative, which happened to be one of my happiest moments; a dream come true. In November 2021, we launched the First Online Cooperative Society in Africa – CloudCooperative – in Ikoyi, Lagos. We registered it as Cloud Cooperative Multipurpose Society where members can save for six months and get access to double up whatever they have saved as a loan. You can become a member just with N3000. Today, we have over 2000 registered members in Nigeria and across different parts of the world,” Bamiro added.
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He maintained that CloudCooperative has catalysed the cooperative sub-sector in Nigeria and globally through the use of technology, adding that within a very short period after its launch, it has changed the face of the sector to a more flexible, very secure and smart way for people to save their money.

He further explained that the uniqueness of CloudCooperative was in the fact that its members could access it from anywhere across the world.

He also disclosed that the society has created several platforms through which it could favourably compete with the mainstream cooperative societies.

“Members can also have access to dividends at the end of the year when we are doing our Annual General Meeting (AGM). Right now, they buy their data, pay bills for cable TV and electricity on our platform,” he said.

Bamiro appreciated everyone who has been part of the continuous growth of the firm.

“From my brilliant tech team to members of TheFastlane & Co, my Governing Council, my Excos, members of CloudCooperative and to the general public, I say thank you for the support. To my mum, wife and kids, thank you for standing by me; I love you. And to CRASON, thank you for the brilliant organisation of this award. I appreciate you.”
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