Sabi Ride (TEF Entrepreneur 2025)
90 posts
@SabiRide
Fixing contemporary ride sharing issues ~Agree to a price ~Feel safe during trips Abuja, Lagos, Ilorin #comingsoon #Ridesharing
Figma, is was nice knowing you.
Big news from me. I've joined @SabiRide as their Chief Operations Officer and expansion lead for South West Nigeria — and for the past few weeks, I've been on the ground in Ilorin, Kwara State, doing the unglamorous work of launching a city from zero. Ilorin is just the beginning. Here's what we've been building. 🧵 It started with a conversation over drinks with the founder, Effiong. SabiRide is a Nigerian ride-hailing platform built to actually put drivers first — and the mission is to take it across the South West and into Lagos. But you don't conquer a region from a laptop. You show up. So I came to Ilorin. We hit the streets almost immediately. Driver parks. Tricycle operators. Taxi men who've been on Bolt and Uber and left with barely anything after commission cuts. The frustration is real — and it's exactly the gap SabiRide is built to close. We walked into offices with no appointments. Pitched to whoever would listen. Got told "send a formal proposal." So we sent it. Then followed up. Then showed up again. We approached Item 7 Fastfood — one of Ilorin's most trusted brands — for a partnership. Not a sit-down dining play. A grab-and-go play. Every person standing outside their outlet with food in hand needs a ride. That's our customer. That's the entry point. We visited the @IlorinHub Innovation Hub. Reached out to student bodies, local institutions, and community stakeholders. We're building trust before we build a fleet — because in cities like this, trust IS the product. Last Wednesday, we held our first driver meeting. Real drivers. Real questions. Real energy. The kind that tells you the demand is there — you just have to earn it. We're mapping the full marketing play too: billboards, radio, campus merch, SUG partnerships at the universities. Everything that makes a city feel like SabiRide belongs here. It's not glamorous work. Proposals sit on desks. Landlords ghost you on spaces. Phone calls go unanswered. Bureaucracy everywhere. But this is how you build a region — one city at a time, one conversation at a time, one handshake at a time. Ilorin is the proof of concept. Ibadan, Abeokuta, Ogbomosho, and Lagos are next. 🔵 I'll be documenting this whole journey publicly — the wins, the losses, the chaos, and the lessons. If you're into startups, market expansion, or just watching someone build something real in real time, stick around. We're only getting started. 🫡 If you're in Ilorin and can be useful, let's talk! Cc: @InsideIlorin_NG #SabiRide #SouthWest #Lagos #Ilorin #BuildingInPublic #StartupLife #Nigeria
Big news from me. I've joined @SabiRide as their Chief Operations Officer and expansion lead for South West Nigeria — and for the past few weeks, I've been on the ground in Ilorin, Kwara State, doing the unglamorous work of launching a city from zero. Ilorin is just the beginning. Here's what we've been building. 🧵 It started with a conversation over drinks with the founder, Effiong. SabiRide is a Nigerian ride-hailing platform built to actually put drivers first — and the mission is to take it across the South West and into Lagos. But you don't conquer a region from a laptop. You show up. So I came to Ilorin. We hit the streets almost immediately. Driver parks. Tricycle operators. Taxi men who've been on Bolt and Uber and left with barely anything after commission cuts. The frustration is real — and it's exactly the gap SabiRide is built to close. We walked into offices with no appointments. Pitched to whoever would listen. Got told "send a formal proposal." So we sent it. Then followed up. Then showed up again. We approached Item 7 Fastfood — one of Ilorin's most trusted brands — for a partnership. Not a sit-down dining play. A grab-and-go play. Every person standing outside their outlet with food in hand needs a ride. That's our customer. That's the entry point. We visited the @IlorinHub Innovation Hub. Reached out to student bodies, local institutions, and community stakeholders. We're building trust before we build a fleet — because in cities like this, trust IS the product. Last Wednesday, we held our first driver meeting. Real drivers. Real questions. Real energy. The kind that tells you the demand is there — you just have to earn it. We're mapping the full marketing play too: billboards, radio, campus merch, SUG partnerships at the universities. Everything that makes a city feel like SabiRide belongs here. It's not glamorous work. Proposals sit on desks. Landlords ghost you on spaces. Phone calls go unanswered. Bureaucracy everywhere. But this is how you build a region — one city at a time, one conversation at a time, one handshake at a time. Ilorin is the proof of concept. Ibadan, Abeokuta, Ogbomosho, and Lagos are next. 🔵 I'll be documenting this whole journey publicly — the wins, the losses, the chaos, and the lessons. If you're into startups, market expansion, or just watching someone build something real in real time, stick around. We're only getting started. 🫡 If you're in Ilorin and can be useful, let's talk! Cc: @InsideIlorin_NG #SabiRide #SouthWest #Lagos #Ilorin #BuildingInPublic #StartupLife #Nigeria
