i3 - March/April 2017 - 38

Policy

By Jeremy Snow

FAC E S O F I N N OVAT I O N

ScholarX CEO,
Co-Founder, Abolade Lawal
Nigeria - not even 10 percent of them
will actually get in. So we thought, "Let's
create an app focused on both local and
global scholarships." We started operations in May 2016, and we launched the
iOS app in July 2016. It's only been a few
months since we launched, but one thing
we learned from the app market is that
adoption of new technology is not that
straightforward. Even if you have developed a strong product and you've identified a large target base, it still takes a lot
of preparation to get people on board.

ScholarX CEO and
Co-founder Abolade
Lawal hopes his higher
growth. Nigeria has close
education app will
to 200 million people and
become a household
more than 50 percent are
name for Africans, and
over 18 years old. The
eventually, people all over
problem is the gap between
the world. The app helps
available opportunities for
Nigerian students find
them to go to university -
and apply for scholat home or abroad - is very
arship opportunities
limited due to a lot of the
Let's create
specifically tailored for
decisions that have to do
them from local univeran app focused with government spending.
sities and international
We are trying to provide
on both local
schools, ensuring young
a solution to that by
and global
Africans have an easier
building a platform where
scholarships.
time accessing quality
these individuals can easily
education. Immigration
come onto the mobile app
has also played a major
or the website and access
- Abolade Lawal, ScholarX CEO
part in the business, since
this information.
and Co-founder
many of the app's creators
work in Nigeria. Lawal is working
Q How did the idea for ScholarX develop?
to expand the app for students
A While in the U.S., I was looking for ways
in other African countries while
to give back and help, and also ways to
also adding more academic features
invest in some kind of enterprise with an
such as courses or textbooks.
African connection. I was approached

Q How can the U.S. government be
friendlier to tech companies that depend
on high-skilled immigrants?
A Currently, there is a program for
African companies that have received
investment from the U.S., where you
can get immigrant status and travel back
and forth between the two countries.
This initiative is very good but could be
further expanded. It's something that
makes more sense considering the large
mass of talent coming out of the region.
And with Fortune 500 companies in the
U.S., creating an environment where
people can easily come into the country
to get immigrant status, it will continue
to lead to great developments.

Q What are your goals for the ScholarX app?
A Our main goal is to help the growing
youth population of Africa access quality
higher education. We chose Nigeria as our
pilot country because of its huge population
38

MARCH/APRIL 2017

Q What is ScholarX working on now?
A Our next step is to grow what we

by Co-founders Maxwell Ogunfuyi and

have right now. We have about 10,000
users but we want to grow into a multimillion platform. Hence, we launched our
Web app earlier this month where users
can use every single function from the
mobile app. As ScholarX evolves, we want
to build an innovative scholarship manage-

Abayomi Johnson, and the initial idea was
for groups studying in Nigerian universities
to use the app for local scholarships.
But let's say five million people a year are
trying to get into local universities in

ment platform/portal that external parties
can use to track their scholarship programs. We'd like to expand our innovation
to fields like agriculture, healthcare
and transportation. ■
I T I S I N N O VAT I O N

SCHOLARX

hanks to the rise
of smartphones,
launching an app
can transform
a startup into a million-dollar
company. Some of the most
successful apps such
as Lyft, Facebook and
Airbnb are now part
of our daily lives.

http://www.scholarx.co

i3 - March/April 2017

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