Creating a market for works of art is her mission and she is breaking all barriers to achieve this.
Abisola Akindeinde is in an unusual tech venture that could help her win $100,000 if Econet founder Strive Masiyiwa is interested enough.
Abisola is a young Nigerian woman and the founder of Zeldot - an innovative e-commerce platform that sells everything art - from the raw materials to the finished creative works.
“What we do is create an easy access for artists, for crafters, art lovers and many others that need to access art and craft materials, we have created an easy and convenient method for them to connect with these materials and we deliver them to their doorstep,” she told Business Insider Sub-Saharan Africa during an interview in Nairobi, Kenya.
Abisola is an art historian and educator. She revealed that the difficulty in getting needed art materials while engaging in a project prompted the decision to create her platform.
“The inspiration behind this platform is for a few years now I have been working as an artist and as an art tutor and also working along with other artists and I had a problem accessing the art materials I needed for my craft work, and I released these materials were not available in Nigeria and I had to source for them elsewhere and it took quite a long time for me to source them and by the time I received them I had already lost my interest and I had to try to regenerate my interest”
“More so I get a lot of phone calls from people asking me where they can get different art materials and sometimes I am even forced to buy for them elsewhere so that they can come and pick it from me and I waste time and resources looking for these art materials and so I released there was a problem that people couldn’t access these art materials and I started searching for a solution and I arrived at having an online platform which would help people access these materials easily at the comfort of their homes and offices rather than waste their time and resources looking for them”
“if they want to pay online they can be able to do on the site if they want to do a cash on delivery they can do that so just like any other e-commerce it is really convenient and easy”
For Abisola, winning the prize is important as it will help in expanding the platform's operations.
“Our plan for the money is to get an office space that would enable more trust from our customers, we also plan to use the money on our administrative and utility cost like building our apps and also creating our delivery chain like buying motorcycles to do our own quick deliveries , so we would have like 60% of this money going into administrative and utility cost”
“The future of this e-commerce platform is to promote and appreciate art in Nigeria by expanding the world of art and craft in Nigeria and also create jobs for our youths”