Adebowale Jolaoso, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Kobo360, has been honored with the B2B Product Marketing Award at The Industry Awards 2020.

The recognition comes as technology continues to change the way businesses approach logistics and the movement of goods across Africa. At Kobo360, Jolaoso has helped develop and grow products that make transportation easier for businesses and the people who provide it. The company was founded to tackle a familiar problem in Nigeria: businesses needed trucks to move their goods, while truck owners and drivers needed access to cargo, and finding the right transportation at the right time could be difficult, with much of the process relying on fragmented networks and limited information.

Kobo360 brought the process onto a digital platform, connecting cargo owners with truck owners and drivers and giving businesses a way to arrange and manage transportation. The company’s ambitions soon went beyond simply matching trucks with loads. It began developing what it called a Global Logistics Operating System, aiming to use technology to support a wider range of logistics activities. The idea gained momentum quickly, and by 2019, Kobo360 had built a network of more than 10,000 trucks and drivers and expanded its operations beyond Nigeria. Its customers included businesses such as Honeywell, Olam, Unilever, Dangote and DHL. The company also raised $30 million in funding during the year, including a $20 million Series A led by Goldman Sachs.

Jolaoso helped drive this expansion, and her team exceeded customer acquisition targets by more than 40 percent, contributing to the rapid growth of Kobo360’s platform and helping the company expand its network as it moved toward more than 10,000 trucks. Growing the network mattered because the platform depended on connecting businesses that needed transportation with truck owners and drivers with available capacity. As more participants joined the platform, the company could serve a larger pool of customers and transportation needs.

Her role also extended to the product itself. One notable project involved redesigning the Kobo360 application in collaboration with engineering and customer support teams. The work included app-store optimization, A/B testing, and user-behavior analysis to improve the user experience. Following the changes, the platform recorded 46 percent weekly user growth over a six-week period.

The redesign came as Kobo360 was expanding the capabilities of its technology. The company introduced features including digital waybills, automated invoicing, real-time tracking, reporting and analytics, bidding tools and customized dashboards. These tools were practical for people managing the day-to-day movement of goods.

For a business shipping cargo, knowing where a shipment is can make a difference to planning. For a truck owner or driver, seeing available trips can mean less time spent looking for work, and bringing these activities together on one platform creates a clearer flow of information between the different parties involved. The company’s development was part of a wider shift in African logistics. Businesses were beginning to look to technology for ways to improve visibility, reduce inefficiencies, and make transportation easier to manage.

Kobo360’s approach attracted attention because it was attempting to apply technology to a problem that affected businesses across the supply chain. Rather than operating simply as a transportation company, it was building a digital platform around the relationships between cargo owners, transport providers and the movement of goods, which made product development particularly important; a new feature had to make sense to the people using it. Customer feedback could point to a problem that needed addressing, while data could show whether a change was actually improving the experience. The challenge was to take what the technology could provide and turn it into something useful in the real world, which was the environment in which Jolaoso’s product marketing work developed and thrived.

Adebowale Jolaoso’s role involved connecting the product with its intended users, understanding their needs, and communicating the value of the technology. The work required close attention to how customers responded to products and how those responses could inform further improvements. This approach also reflected the changing nature of logistics itself. As more of the industry moved toward digital platforms, product professionals were increasingly required to understand not only how to present a technology solution, but also the operational problem behind it, which meant understanding the realities of moving goods while helping develop products that could make the process easier for the businesses and people involved.

Jolaoso’s recognition with the B2B Product Marketing Award comes against this backdrop of growth and product development at Kobo360. Her work has involved bringing together product development, technology, analytics, and customer understanding. The recognition marks an important stage in her work with Kobo360, as the company continues to expand its platform and explore how technology could improve the movement of goods across Africa