From Selling Yoruba Films To Being A Top Earning Paga Agent: Meet Teejat
How does one go from having a HND in Accounting, being unable to secure your dream job of working in a bank, selling Yoruba DVDs out of a street stall to survive, to earning over N600k a month?
We are all about technology with a human touch.
At Paga we believe in incorporating the human touch in all that we do, and that is why our agents are the heart and soul of our business. In Nigeria where we have a large population of unbanked and severely underbanked individuals, especially in remote areas, and a high percentage of low income & poorly educated population, we cannot rely alone on technology to bring our financial services to the people. We need people that other people can trust and rely on to handle their money and private transactions and that is where our agents come in.
And that is why TJ’s story is important:
Meet TJ, one of our top Paga agents, and all round self motivated bad ass.
“I never thought I would get to do what bankers do”, TJ said enthusiastically at our last agent retreat. On just another day, sitting in a hot shack, hoping to attract some customers to buy some DVDs of which he was selling not nearly enough per week, he was approached by a Paga employee who was recruiting agents in his area. He was immediately drawn to the model, and enthusiastic at having the chance to make an impact in his community in which many people had no access to banking, and eager to work with money and numbers. This was in 2013.
Today, TJ has three paga outlets across Ogun state, 12 dedicated employees and is earning 2.9x the monthly minimum wage in the country. In May alone, he processed almost 5,600 transactions. All because he seized an opportunity that was presented to him with the resilience and entrepreneurial spirit that the average Nigerian is known for.
This is why we are passionate about making life possible.
Making life possible sounds like just a great slogan, and every day we are putting out one fire or the other, or putting heads together to come up with ways to better serve our customers. When it is put into perspective, it is humbling to see the snowball effect of changing lives, and how empowering just one person inadvertently empowers others. In TJ’s case, signing up as a Paga agent led to job creation for 12 other people who depend on him for their livelihood. At our core, this is what Paga is about. This is what inspired our CEO Tayo Oviosu to bring his vision to life.
We constantly say to one another: “If we want to go far, we must go together”, and that is what building the Paga community feels like.
We look forward to sharing more stories and the impact created by the work that we do.
Making Life Possible is our ethos at paga, and it is what keeps us committed to our mission of providing inclusive financial services for all Nigerians. With over 15,000 agent outlets and 8 million+ customers, we are inspired by the stories of the community we are building and the people we are empowering by making life possible every single day.
