Dr Kayode Adedapo Kolawole brings thirty years of experience across manufacturing, B2B sales, marketing and distribution to his role as Sales Director at Nagode Industries Limited.
A Fellow of both the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria and the Institute of Management Consultants Nigeria, a Certified Management Consultant and a member of the International Council of Management Consulting Institutes, he now directs commercial strategy for sub-Saharan Africa’s largest chemical distribution network. In this position, he manages a portfolio that exceeds 500 product lines across the polyurethane foam, paint, pharmaceutical, detergent and construction sectors.
His track record speaks for itself. Product basket expansion under his leadership has delivered 60% revenue growth, with one division growing its gross profit margin from 5% to a steady 14% over five years, lifting annual sales from $6 million to $25 million. He opened three new branches in Sokoto, Kaduna and Port Harcourt, expanding the company’s Pan-Nigerian footprint by 40% and strengthening its cross-border sales activity. He’s also built an employee appreciation and recognition scheme credited with increasing productivity and cutting staff turnover across the sales team.
We chatted with him to find out more about the SaaS opportunities being missed, what he’s looking for as a judge and his advice for founders entering the competition this year.
You’ve spent thirty years in Nigerian and West African markets across manufacturing, distribution and sales. What does your experience tell you about the SaaS opportunities that are still being missed?
Many African SMEs still rely heavily on traditional sales methods like referrals, physical markets, customer service and word-of-mouth.
As a sales professional building a network and business across the West African market, I’ve found that there’s a severe lack of practical, accessible frameworks that bridge the gap between automation and the day-to-day sales execution for practitioners in developing economies like ours.
In the current fast-moving global technology and business ecosystem, I’ve come to realise that the ability to integrate technology into sales processes effectively is no longer an advantage – it’s become a necessity for business survival. I’ve found that digital adoption across regional sales operations remains noticeably slow, leaving a clear operational gap that software as a service is uniquely positioned to fill. This imbalance creates a compelling market opportunity for SaaS providers, making immediate investment in modern digital sales infrastructure essential.
You were the first Black director in Nagode Industries’ 40-year history. What does that mean to you, and what does it say about the pace of change in African business leadership?
Becoming the first Black director at Nagode Industries represents far more than personal advancement or recognition for decades of sustained performance. It reflects a profound organisation-wide trust that carries genuine responsibility across our 40-year history. This milestone reinforces the fundamental truth that sustained excellence, integrity and absolute commitment can break down traditional corporate barriers.
On an organisational level, my promotion reflects both the progress we have recorded and the positive change we have embraced over the years, reinforcing our commitment to live up to our slogan, “Nagode… Inspiring Africa.” At the same time, it reflects the gradual but important shift taking place across African businesses, where organisations are beginning to recognise the value of diverse leadership perspectives.
As the African economy continues to grow and integrate into the global marketplace, companies are increasingly realising that inclusive leadership strengthens innovation, decision-making and long-term business performance. I look forward to seeing diverse leadership become the norm and not the exception across the African corporate landscape.
You’ve written a book on AI for salespeople. How do you think AI is changing B2B sales specifically, and what should SaaS founders building in this space understand?
As I enumerated in my book, The Salesperson’s Pocket Guide to Artificial Intelligence, AI is already transforming B2B sales efforts across several core areas. It automates repetitive tasks such as email drafting, report generation and personalised product recommendations. It leverages predictive analytics to determine future sales outcomes and identify customer behaviour patterns. Additionally, it streamlines competitor analysis and powers automated customer service operations.
In the evolving digital era where AI is redefining B2B sales, it’s important for businesses to recognise that technology is simultaneously changing how buyers buy and how sellers sell. This serves as a clear pointer for SaaS founders building in this space to focus their efforts on leveraging these core shifts across the B2B sales landscape.
For instance, as buyers seek comprehensive product details before ever speaking to a salesperson, your website, content, product documentation, customer evidence and related assets must be AI-discoverable and self-service friendly. Similarly, as personalisation becomes the expectation, your go-to-market strategy must leverage customer-specific insights, as generic messaging will simply fall short of its objectives.
What are you looking for when you evaluate a SaaS company entering this competition?
Experience has shown that most inventors do not struggle with the process stages of invention from ideation and evaluation to prototyping, testing and implementation. Instead, they struggle with leverage.
My assessment of a SaaS startup in this competition will be based on how it intends to leverage these efforts. What’s the most expensive problem the software is trying to fix? Is the content original and creative? How scalable is the innovation? What’s the marketability of the product? How user-friendly is the product? What depth of impact will it create in the business, marketplace, industry or economy?
What do you think makes a SaaS product genuinely defensible in an emerging market context, where distribution and trust are often harder to build than the technology itself?
In our organisation, sometime in 2024, we onboarded to a new accounting software package, but the project suffered a setback owing to a number of clear reasons. I believe a combination of specific factors is what really makes a SaaS product defensible.
Distribution and trust are rarely built quickly around a newly introduced innovation. However, these challenges can be overcome once a SaaS company convincingly addresses initial friction regarding product cost, service availability, potential loss of man-hours, fear of product failure, data insecurity and unreliability.
Other complementary factors that render a product defensible include localised workflow knowledge and deeply embedded customer relationships.
What is the biggest mistake you see early-stage SaaS founders make when trying to enter markets like Nigeria or West Africa?
Major mistakes SaaS startups make when introducing their products to emerging markets like Nigeria or West Africa are quite common.
The first is the temptation to consider the country or region a digitally developed market rather than a developing one. Another is placing attention on the technology instead of prioritising the problem the product addresses in the region. Startups also fall into underestimating trust-building, overcomplicating the product and paying little or no attention to local workflows. Finally, they often assume self-service growth rather than investing in initial customer engagement, relationship building, customer education, hands-on onboarding and other similar efforts.
What does success look like for the SaaS sector over the next five years?
In five years, success for the SaaS sector in would mean progressing from product penetration effort and promise to reliability, resilience and sustainability. This will happen through building trusted, profitable, AI-enabled companies that are deeply embedded in how businesses operate, while creating scalable solutions that can compete both regionally and globally.
What is your number one piece of advice for entrepreneurs entering the competition this year?
The most successful inventor isn’t the one with the most sophisticated technology, but one who deeply understands a real customer pain point and solves it better than anyone else.
Against this backdrop, therefore, my number one piece of advice for entrepreneurs in the competition this year is to fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Before scaling, make sure you can clearly answer: What is the most expensive problem we are solving and why are customers willing to pay us to solve it?
