Dear Stakeholder,
Of Evolution and Profitability; the Positives in Negatives
Thank you for another year. We have progressed; particularly, we have progressed at learning daily. This sums up our meaningful evolution. Outcomes were preset, some were achieved and some not; most importantly however, we knew which was which. Our consciousness of and the ability to rightly respond to preconceived expectations; especially aided by observable data and intelligent information sums up our crawls, walks, runs and the increased acceleration for flight. We are yet to fly.
It has been only one thing since June 11, 2014; the burning desire to solve clients’ challenges. We build businesses around challenges. The solutions are rarely apparent. The fresh ideas around them are the easiest and laziest parts. The rubber hitting the road with the dedication to steer the course of the challenge until a solution with some profit is found is the foundation of business. To find those that will stay with you in your commitment to the founding and the foundry of scaling the solution is the real business opportunity. That our clients continue to give us their challenges to solve and that we continue to solve them profitably for them and ourselves is what we raise our glasses to.
Taxaide began as a service response to a business need: the need to assist a client manage its multiple compliance obligations in the Nigerian tax and fiscal space. That singular satisfied client and the yearn for more led to our eventual incorporation in Nigeria in June 2014. As at today, we have the pleasant responsibility of, on the average, annually managing the service needs of over 20million natural and corporate persons in the areas of taxation, business process automation, data security, manpower management, standardization, training, certifications, logistics and warehousing; with the businesses around data security, standardization, logistics and warehousing having been added to us in the last one year.
Taxaide Technologies Ltd (Taxtech®) (www.taxtech.com.ng), houses our data security business, providing both data protection and cybersecurity services as two distinct lines of service offerings. Our foray into the space principally arose from the need to ensure adequate protection and compliance for the +100,000 Client’s tax and financial data that passes through Taxaide annually. Thus, in July 2019, Nigeria’s Information Technology Development Agency (“NITDA”), on the back of the 2019 Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (“NDPR”) licensed Taxtech (NITDA/DPCO/0004) as a data protection compliance organization. As at date Taxtech is responsible for the data security compliance of about 50 other Data Controllers in Nigeria, each processing an average minimum of 500,000 Personal Data. Further and deriving from its licence, Taxtech, along with our dedicated manpower management business, 21Search Ltd (21Search) (www.21search.ng), established the NDPR Academy® (www.ndpracademy.ng) in December 2019 to provide training and certification programmes to aspiring and practicing privacy professionals. As at today NDPR Academy® has trained about 300 privacy professionals with a mandate for 700 more before its first anniversary.
21Search houses our standardization business, having just recently, in conjunction with our foreign partners facilitated the training, audit and certification of both Taxaide and Taxtech for their ISO 9001:2015 (Quality Management System) and ISO/IEC 27001:2013 (Information Security Management System) standards respectively. Taxaide and Taxtech got the relevant certifications on May 28 and May 27, 2020, respectively, Congratulations! 21Search’s mandate is to see that our relevant Client’s businesses and processes qualify for whatever standardization that is required for their operational efficiency, compliance requirement and overall competitiveness.
Our logistics and warehousing operations came on stream in November last year when, arising from our Customs agency (Licence No. C518RC1196547) and our free trade zone management functions, Clients saddled us with the responsibility of solving the bigger challenge around predictable and efficient logistics solutions for their imported, exported and in-country bound goods. Thus, we sprang to work and eventually partnered with Ci-Gabba a third-party logistics and distribution business to birth Taxaide Global Logistics Ltd (TGL) (www.tgl.ng), with a core focus on logistics and warehousing solutions for Clients. As at today, TGL has a monthly minimum mandate of moving 300 containerized goods and non-containerized goods and equipment for Clients across Nigeria and the West Africa sub-region.
Group-wide, we have consistently maintained our ³30% YoY revenue growth. Our expansion and investments have, in the short-run, impacted our 2019 profitability, with a clear line of sight on long-term shareholders’ wealth maximization. Given the prohibitive borrowing costs (averagely >25%) in our business environment, we have set plans in motion for higher equitization of the business aided by longer tenured financing. Both our existing and new business lines will see more integrations in the new year; with clear focus in ensuring that each Client massively enjoys the advantage of the less costly, relative to market, additional services available within our Group – hence why we are, together, #TaxaideStrongerAt6.
As we remain true to our source, that is, satisfying each and every Client with sustainable and profitable solutions, end to end, we can only dream of a better and more brilliant 2020 business year, the raging global health pandemic notwithstanding. Cheers to our meaningful and profitable evolution!
Bidemi Olumide
June 11, 2020
