Relocating for school, a job, or just to venture can be an overwhelming experience, especially in areas with extremely unconducive weather conditions. A lot of immigrants eventually retreat to their home country in order to gain some sense of normality or some sense of “home”. This is the story of the founders at Welkom-U, Babajide the co-founder and CTO of Welkom-U joined Welkom-U at its infancy stage when the CEO, his close friend from school shared the vision of creating a way for immigrants to settle with ease. Babajide’s settlement experience allowed him to share this dream as well and immediately came on board to achieve this goal of creating a one stop shop for all settlement needs.
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Welkom-U is a social shifter and a highly impactful social enterprise initiative, with the aim at helping Immigrants settle easily in several regions across the world with Canada being the pilot region to experience its services. Since lunch in 2021 Welkom-U has been operating mostly in Atlantic Canada, helping hundreds of immigrants settle. Services including airport pick up, grocery runs, accommodation, community integration, bank account opening and SIN registration. Through this endeavor, Welkom-U has received product traction and recognition since its launch. Since their commencement, Welkom-U were inducted into the chamber of commerce in New Brunswick, they were recognized by DMZ Ryerson as a Social Impact tech startup in 2021 , Onboarded into the Venn Innovation garage in August 2020, Won the StartVisa Award through Planet Hatch in 2020 and are a Social Shifters Global Innovation Challenge 2021 award winner. Thus, Welkom-Us impact has not gone unnoticed in the Canadian Immigration space.

Babajide has been at the forefront of the product development process, directing the company’s technology operations as the Chief Executive Officer, Babajide explains that Welkom-U’s application is powered by its own bespoke model that recommend key settlement services that will be beneficial to its users, helping them through their settlement journey. He mentioned that the biggest problems faced by immigrants are encapsulated within the lack of access to services and the lack of information on how to go about getting what they need for standard living. Welkom-U through their extensive market research have been able to isolate the major pinpoints faced by newcomers in Canada being accommodation, financial burden and excess expenditure, social isolation, obtaining local currency, weather conditions and employment uncertainty. Welkom-U through their application, have provided key services that attack these pain points directly. Currently they are in their pilot phase and are currently helping hundreds of newcomers settle in Canada, partnering with landlords who host over 500+ houses on their platform they are able to provide accommodation to many newcomers in the Atlantic region. They also go a step further to process the rents of these newcomers through their application which amounts to north of 50 thousand Canadian Dollars monthly. They also provide hundreds of airport pick up services to hundreds of newcomers monthly, and provide information on how to set up bank accounts, build credit and obtain a Social Insurance Number. Most recently because of the notable impact the have made in this space, Welkom-U was invited to a 32 man panel to discuss evolving immigration policies by the office of the Minister of Immigration. They were also invited to speak by the Nigerian High Commission during Vice Presidents Osinbajos Visit to Ottawa, Canada.
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It is no surprise that Babajide and his team are able to make this level of impact during this short period of time. Looking closer into his career, made impact in the FinTech space in Nigeria through Appzone (now Zone) directly responsible for the establishment of key financial services like the Heritage Banks Octiplus app, Providus Banks Omni-channel banking platform, GTBanks revolutionary instant card Issuance solution, and Fidelity Banks card and pin issuance system amongst many other services in the FinTech Space. He also holds a master degree from Sheffield Hallam University in New Brunswick and has worked with power house companies in the United Kingdom like EDF Energy and has served the British Public sector through his work with Forfront. In 2020 he was awarded as a 30 under 30 Innovator in Atlantic Canada through his work with Welkom-U and his track record for innovation. Hence, the success of Welkom-U through his leadership is no surprise.

He mentioned that he will be speaking at the Social Enterprise World Forum Youth Forum in Amsterdam on the 28th of March 2023 about technology and immigration. He also did mention that although Welkom-U are predominantly operating in Atlantic Canada, they have commenced plans to extend their services to all Canada and the UK as well before the end of the year.
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