Andy Umana on building real estate experience with the blockchain

Andy Umana caught up with CrossFund’s Editor-in-Chief, Luke Sheehan, to share a journey that has taken him from being a young student at Ilorin State University, with an interest in environmental sustainability, to being the founder of a blockchain and real estate startup during a pandemic. Umana’s father was a civil servant and her mother a trader; Umana was “that guy who was ready to help and try to see how he could put food on the table” for his family. In his own words, he has “always sold”. As an adult, he first manifested it by starting an agricultural produce supply chain business (Yahgro), with a model based on finding food supply in northern Nigeria and selling in the south. Bottlenecks and a large presence of middlemen entered the mix, and then inflation hit, making what was a profitable company difficult to scale. That’s when he discovered the blockchain. A peer-to-peer platform followed and then he joined the team that created the first NFT collection in Nigeria. At the time, he figured there must be an untapped opportunity somewhere. He is now the founder and head of growth at Relsify, a shared real estate platform for Africa, which launched in 2021.

Tell me how Relsify started.

I moved to Lagos during the pandemic. Someone had a distressed property to sell and I couldn’t afford it at the time. Still, I had a community because of my involvement in the crypto space. I thought, “With this community and technology, we can go into this property and share the profits that will come out of it.”
Even during the pandemic, real estate grew faster than any other part of the economy. To bring people into the market who, like me, are not part of the “1% of the 1%”, new solutions were needed. I mean, it is obvious that the quality of people’s income is decreasing day by day in Nigeria, but housing costs are increasing. In order to gain access to the market and gain returns, innovation is required. The opportunity to get into real estate investments is getting slimmer and slimmer. The space is very cash-based, and in Nigeria – and Africa as a whole – there is little infrastructure to allow people to access mortgages and become home owners. So we thought of a way to scale a platform to allow people to profit from the real estate market that they are actively involved in. We did a proper market analysis and found that the best way to go is to build something that uses a transparent system that allows people to crowdfund and own pieces of real estate in high-rise areas. That’s the basic story of how Relsify was born – hopefully the start of a revolution in housing. We’ve made a lot of progress so far, in terms of regulatory compliance and definitely building the product.

You say on LinkedIn that you are hiring. Can you tell me about how you are expanding your team? Is it difficult to find and retain talent?
We are definitely facing this battle. “Japa Syndrome” [the brain drain of young Nigerians] is real. Many talents move to other countries. Two or three of our team members, just before the product launch, left the country. To address this, we’re trying to build a culture around solving pain points for talent, not just hiring people to get the job done. We build a community around the product, so that they feel belonging and ownership of it. We shape minds to ensure they are genuinely concerned and interested in revolutionizing the way people invest in property. It is basically how we are going to find and retain the right talent now.

If you were in charge of Nigeria, what would you change?
We are building a highly regulated product; we must cooperate with the government of the day. One of the challenges we face – and why we haven’t broken into the market full force from day one – is that we’ve had to wait and talk to the SEC in Nigeria to secure a provisional license to do what we’re trying to do to do. Despite many challenges, we were able to follow up until they recently made one that suits us. But now we are waiting for approvals to do it. They tell us they are waiting for the new government to come through before them [the SEC] start issuing this license, because they want to understand [the new government’s tone and approach to policy first].

The representatives of the new government explained to us during the campaign that they would be pro-blockchain; that Nigeria would no longer be among the crypto-agnostic countries. There are many different things the government has to do, in terms of accepting and working with innovation. I believe that regulation can eventually catch up with innovation, and we will see ways to market for the solutions and products we build. I think the new government should create a better playing field for startups like mine. There are positive signs from the president-elect around the real estate and start-up sectors, dating back to his time as governor of Lagos state.

Are you optimistic about getting enough funding in the near future?
Certainly. I am very excited about how the financing looks like in Africa. We have seen large financing rounds and acquisitions recently. I think there are exciting times ahead when people see the work coming out of Africa. I’ve mostly raised from friends and family to start and build this business, and I’m trying to build traction towards a proper seed round. All in all, I am very optimistic about where we are headed.

We are switching to using our expertise to build, and the authorities are in the running. When people see this from the outside world, they will definitely see the changes in our market and more funding will be available. We are just in time for that.

Ours is not just an “emerging market”, but one that is poised to exit major deals and unicorns on exchanges, despite certain macroeconomic conditions causing depression at this very moment.

How do you see the current and potential value of the blockchain ecosystem in Africa?

Blockchain, as a technology, has already helped Africa; people don’t say this enough. The government here has tended to sleep on it and has not found a way to deal with it. But for many traders, the only way they can pay for goods and sell outside the country is by using cryptocurrencies. These solve real problems for people. I know people who go to school abroad and that’s the only way they can get money from their parents.

View the spending limit on our Nigerian debit cards. You can’t even pay for Apple music on it. You see a lot of startups floating around using crypto to solve this.

Any comments on the diaspora? Can you see some of these rich migrants of Nigerian origin in the US reinvesting in Nigeria?

I think that is something we are already seeing from Nigerians and other people in the wider diaspora. We want them to see the potential in this market. That’s why my product is centered around the blockchain. The open ledger allows it to be transparent: you put in ₦1 million and within a month or a year you can see it has gone to ₦1.8 million or whatever, depending on the return element. I think diaspora Africans will trust the property system as a whole if you have these elements in play and they are interoperable with each other.

What is overhyped and what is underhyped in your ecosystem?

Much of the money coming in has gone to fintech. The hype has been about bringing money into or out of the country. What is underhyped is the SMEs – how they can spend their money in the country. With more regulation, people will see that your money can come and sit in this country and give a positive result. I am optimistic that it will change.

Where will technology be in Nigeria in 10 years?

When it comes to technology, we can play with the likes of the US and China as a country – we can become a hub. We have the population and the talent.