Odunayo Eweniyi was born in Oyo, Nigeria the first of four children. She attended the private tertiary institution, Covenant University, Nigeria, where she graduated the best in her field.
After graduation, she met up with fellow graduates from Covenant with whom she founded a platform of discount cards for business.
The idea was not successful, and then they tried with PushCV, a website that helps job applicants to write their CV, a project that also did not “pick”. In 2016, however, they founded the company that would lead them to success.
The idea of PiggyVest came to Odunayo Eweniyi after meeting a lady who saved what she had for a year every day, and when she opened her piggy bank, she discovered that she had only saved $ 97.
PiggyVest.ng started operations in April 2016 with the recommendations of PushCV users and began to grow by word of mouth. Odunayo Eweniyi focused the platform on millennials who wish to save periodically with one goal in mind. Savers can deposit from one dollar per day and set a date to withdraw the money.
In just six months after its launch, PiggyVest helped save its users $ 58K. After more than three years, this sum amounts to $ 58 million.
ODUNAYO EWENIYI BACKGROUND
As the first child of two professors, Odunayo Eweniyi always took studying seriously. She breezed through primary and secondary education with top grades before attending Covenant University, a church-owned college that has produced a curious number of millennial startup founders and also where she met her business partners.
Growing up, Odunayo wanted to be a doctor, but would later opt for Computer Engineering when it came time to go to college because she did not think she had exactly what it took to become a doctor.
PIGGYVEST.NG EARLY BEGINNINGS
Odun Eweniyi graduated top of her Computer Engineering class in 2013 and her parents wanted her to get a Masters’ degree next. She started sending out applications for her graduate studies, the result of which was her being selected by two Ivy League colleges.
A couple of weeks after she graduated from Covenant, she interviewed for a job and got it. On her way back from the interview, she met up with co-founder of Piggyvest and Covenant University graduate, Somto Ifezue .
She had been contemplating the job she had just interviewed for but after she met up with Somto and found out he and his team had a discount card startup called “Parolz”, she decided to join them instead.
Somto had been a pretty awesome engineer from their Covenant University’s days (Odunayo says he once built a miniature airplane that could fly in college) so she figured she didn’t have anything to lose. That event would fundamentally change Odunayo’s life.
While working at Parolz, Odunayo was also doing side gigs, one of which is notably, tech writing at TechCabal. Meanwhile, Somto was building something called CV Flash to help people who couldn’t write CVs properly or did so with terrible English.
At some point, Odunayo joined him to help write CVs for people – effectively becoming a co-founder. Soon, they did more than just write CVs, but also connected users to employers. And that was how PushCV was developed.
By March 2014, the team decided to set aside Parolz, and focus on PushCV instead. But Jobberman was already a thing and they needed to differentiate themselves. A distinct feature of Push CV from others like it was the idea to screen the applicants first and send the best candidates to the employers thus becoming a platform for pre-screened job candidates as well.
By the end of 2015, PushCV was profitable and the team was already thinking of the next thing. It was great to help people get jobs but the team felt they could do more.
TIn December 2015 however, someone shared pictures of her “kolo”, in which she had saved N1000 everyday in the calendar year, on Twitter. One of the PushCV team members, Josh Chibueze then took up the idea and started to look for ways to digitize it.
They asked PushCV users how else they could help and saving salaries was the top choice. By mid-January 2016, version one of the PiggyVest product was ready.
PiggyVest has since become one of the biggest digital money saving platforms, not only in Nigeria, but in Africa. This has therefore solidified Odunayo Eweniyi’s place as an unstoppable force in an otherwise male-dominated Tech Space. And that’s some boss status!
By Oluwamayowa Akinyemi
Oluwamayowa Akinyemi is a digital and web content developer with experience in web content development and management as well as research and writing. He is an avid reader of random subject matters and a sucker for movies and video games. He is also passionate about youth empowerment and is a global affairs analyst and enthusiast.
