David Chima’s tech journey started with the deep-seated perception within the mechanics of commerce. It was a philosophy formed within the busy markets of Owerri, Imo State, in South-East Nigeria by his mom, a civil servant who ran a buying and selling enterprise to complement her revenue.
Chima now applies these early classes in commerce to Kuraway, a business-to-business (B2B) platform that serves as a digital middleman for suppliers and retailers throughout the continent. To know him, nevertheless, one should take a look at the boy who realized the foundations of commerce by observing his mom’s facet enterprise, the mechanics of provide and demand and, later, turning a college campus into his logistics laboratory.
The way it began
Chima’s entry into enterprise started in childhood. He credit his early publicity to the grit of Nigerian commerce to accompanying his mom, an administrative employees member on the Federal College of Expertise, Owerri (FUTO), to the market as she equipped the purchasers of her facet rice enterprise.
“Civil servants in Nigeria don’t earn lots,” he says. “So, she has at all times tried to seek out further sources of revenue. Her main [source of extra income] was rice distribution. She in some way discovered a serious warehouse that might give her a reduction, after which she resold at a premium [price]. She additionally owned a enterprise centre [where] they did printing.”
By the point he gained admission to review Supplies and Metallurgical Engineering at FUTO in 2021, Chima began his personal buying and selling enterprise.
The Aba enterprise: A pupil’s logistics masterclass
Whereas at school, Chima launched a enterprise supplying custom-tailored clothes and branded T-shirts, an operation that required a exact workflow.
In 2018, throughout his third yr, the Pupil Union Authorities (SUG)— the consultant for college kids in increased establishments—engaged him to supply souvenirs for 4,000 to five,000 new entrants.
“What we did for SUG was go to Aba, supply garments, model them, and [deliver] to [the students],” he remembers. “We turned a serious contractor for SUG. At any time when they wished to provide polos, they known as us. On the time, I used to be extra like a intermediary.”
The method was a rigorous train in end-to-end administration: “For those who wished to get the garments, we first inquired, What’s the amount you get?’ Then we agreed on a design. Proper after agreeing on this design, we agreed on a cost methodology,” he explains.
As a result of it was a contract, Chima usually needed to fund the manufacturing out of pocket and was solely “paid after supplying.” He constructed relationships with bulk producers in Aba, Abia State, a business hub that hosts among the greatest markets in Nigeria. This positioned him to behave as a bridge between the manufacturing facility and the campus.
Delivering orders from Aba was easy; he relied on the native transport system: “There are lots of buses that go from Aba to anyplace,” Chima says.
This operational mannequin assorted relying on the consumer. For the bigger institutional contracts, Chima managed your entire manufacturing cycle earlier than seeing a return.
“We now have producers in Aba. We [used to] do bulk manufacturing for SUG,” Chima says.
Nonetheless, for smaller entities and personal organisations, he adopted a distinct construction: “For people, they paid upfront–generally they paid 50%, generally 70%–after which once we equipped, we obtained the steadiness.”
He later expanded past campus, supplying garments Aba to clients outdoors the college, together with members of his church throughout a centenary programme.
He continued the enterprise even after graduating in 2021.
An try at constructing a digital market
Entrepreneurship is never linear, and in 2020, Chima confronted a major setback when the worldwide pandemic introduced financial exercise to a standstill.
The earlier yr, he had tried to deal with Nigeria’s rental inefficiencies by a product known as Housing Zone. The timing, nevertheless, proved troublesome.
“The concept was to seek out properties, record them on this platform, and assist folks lease their properties quicker,” he says. “It was a housing market. When COVID-19 hit, we weren’t in a position to exit. [There was] no solution to promote it, onboard new folks, new homes, or new brokers.”
The enterprise folded, however the slowdown gave him time to recalibrate.
In 2022, he returned with a brand new enterprise: Bondly, which he co-founded with Isaac Edmund, who now serves as Chief Expertise Officer (CTO). The startup started as an escrow cost answer–a service that holds funds or paperwork on behalf of transacting events–designed to bridge the belief hole between African retailers and international consumers hesitant to pay upfront.
Kuraway and the pivot
Because the market advanced, they realised that they wanted to layer escrow onto “one thing [bigger]”.
In September 2024, Bondly pivoted to Kuraway – a reputation Chima says is “coined from kura, a Japanese phrase for ‘storehouse.’”
Kuraway now operates as a B2B commerce platform, competing in a market that features gamers corresponding to Sami, Fluna, and Brydge.
Kuraway serves as a central sourcing hub for retailers throughout sectors corresponding to agro-commodities, chemical compounds, and cosmetics. The platform allows international consumers to seek out suppliers throughout African borders, an important step for initiatives such because the African Continental Free Commerce Space (AfCFTA). As soon as matched, funds are processed by the platform, guaranteeing transactions are safe and traceable.
The pivot was not an abandonment of escrow, however an integration of it right into a broader market mannequin.
“We simply layered {the marketplace} onto the escrow merchandise [we had already built]. That’s the pivot that occurred. The escrow is completely lifeless; it’s simply that this time round, it’s non-compulsory,” Chima explains.
The pivot has begun to generate traction. Now headquartered in Lagos with a crew of 10 full-time employees, the corporate has expanded past the garment clusters of South-East Nigeria to assist retailers in Ghana and Cameroon.
To this point, he says the platform has facilitated greater than $600,000 in commerce and helps over 1,300 companies.
“It’s extra like replicating what we had been doing [in university], however this time round, on a platform,” he says.
Trying forward 5 years, Chima is targeted on scale.
“Our imaginative and prescient is to be the go-to platform for commerce in Africa. Consider it just like the Alibaba for Africa,” he says.
His motivation blends affect with ambition: “Personally, [my motivation is] to create the options we should have in Africa, then develop into stinkingly wealthy.”
When he isn’t navigating the complexities of cross-border B2B commerce, Chima swaps the digital market for the chessboard.
“I play chess,” he says, a becoming passion for a founder who has needed to assume a number of strikes forward, from the markets of Owerri to the broader panorama of African commerce.
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