Mitchell Elegbe – 'Keep solving problems and getting joy'

Mitchell Elegbe Co-founder and CEO, Interswitch

For Mitchell Elegbe, the journey to building one of Nigeria’s most respected businesses, Interswitch, was driven by the passion to solve a social problem. He encountered it years ago in his youth when he tried to withdraw money from an ATM while abroad when his card was seized and he was left stranded.

“I made up my mind that one day I would conquer this problem,” recalls Elegbe.

When he returned to Nigeria, he noticed how the issue of getting money out from banks was creating a social menace. At the time, there weren’t many bank branches available and the only way one could withdraw funds was to physically go into a bank and wait to be served. This could often take up to three to four hours. The tedious wait times invariably led to clients taking out much more than they needed to avoid a repeat journey.

“This was usually on weekends, typically on Friday, when people wanted to have enough money to spend, and if you [knew] Nigeria at the time, spraying cash was the norm. What this did was create a lucrative business for robbers. So, it was normal for people to attack you on Fridays because they [knew] there was a lot of money at home,” says Elegbe.

This was Elegbe’s mountain. The next question he needed to figure out was how lucrative the solution was and at what price point people were willing to pay to have it. As a result, he developed an approach which he terms as “the Tropical Savannah method” and one that forms the bedrock of Interswitch’s success.