Fara Ashiru Jituboh is a Nigerian-American software engineer and entrepreneur, renowned as the co-founder, CEO, and CTO of Okra, a leading open finance infrastructure company in Africa. Her journey reflects a blend of technical expertise and entrepreneurial acumen, positioning her as a significant figure in the African tech ecosystem.
Fara Ashiru Jituboh is a Nigerian tech whiz with over 20 programming languages under her belt. Her brainchild, Okra, is a Nigeria-based fintech platform enabling secure, real-time financial information exchange between customers, applications, and banks.
In other words, this platform helps connect customer accounts to banking apps and get real-time financial information. In return, the company makes money from the product fees it earns when customers connect their bank accounts to third-party applications using the platform.
In 2019, Jituboh visited the United States to have a baby, and it was during that period she found the idea for Okra. She stayed in the United States for almost a year and used apps like Mint to manage funds directly from her mobile phone.
When she returned to Nigeria, she noticed that the app wasn’t working because it wasn’t connected to a Nigerian bank. Seeing the market gap, she decided to create a similar app. She developed okra to connect to her own bank account.
Early Life and Education
Born in Nigeria, Fara spent parts of her upbringing in Saudi Arabia and the United States, providing her with a diverse cultural and educational background. She developed a passion for technology early on, becoming proficient in over 20 programming languages. Her formal education includes a degree in Computer Science, which laid the foundation for her future endeavors in software engineering and entrepreneurship.
Fara's career encompasses roles in several high-profile organizations. She began her professional journey with BMW, contributing to the design and creation of the interactive map for the BMW Museum. Subsequent positions included stints at JP Morgan Chase, Fidelity Investments, and Daimler Mercedes Benz, where she honed her skills in software development and project management.
Entrepreneurial Journey with Okra
The inception of Okra was inspired by Fara's personal experiences. During a stay in the United States in 2019, she utilized financial management apps like Mint to oversee her finances. Upon returning to Nigeria, she realized that similar applications were incompatible with Nigerian banks, highlighting a significant gap in the market. This realization led to the founding of Okra in 2020, alongside co-founder David Peterside.
Okra serves as an open finance platform that enables developers and businesses to build personalized digital services and fintech products for customers. It facilitates the secure exchange of real-time financial information between customers, applications, and banks, effectively acting as a 'super-connector' in the financial ecosystem.
Okra is actively moving forward by partnering with all Nigerian banks, even claiming a guarantee of 99.9% uptime.
The business model provides developers and businesses with integrations into existing banking services and deducts fees from subsequent transactions. These integrations include account authorization, balances, identities, income, payments, and transactions.
Top companies such as Access Bank, Aella, Interswitch and uLesson are among its over 100 partners.
Okra was oversubscribed within six months of its launch, and even a pandemic couldn’t delay the startup.
As a testament to her company’s growing success, Jituboh raised a $1 million seed round.
One of the top investors in the preliminary round was TLcom. For the investor, Okra was an outlier in the portfolio, and investing in Okra was the first investment in FinTech. The company has invested in Okra’s infrastructure, and TLcom has extensive experience investing in Africa, so it also brings out the expertise that Okra needs.
In April of 2021, Okra announced that it had deposited a $ 3.5 million seed round with a bank, led by US-based Susa Ventures, bringing its funding to $4.5M in total.
“We build the tools that businesses need to achieve full digital transformation and we are excited to be welcoming some highly strategic global investors as we scale our open finance as a service operation,” Jituboh said on the back of the raise.
“The opportunities to collaborate and grow together are significant and we are now in a strong position to continue to build and scale in Africa and global API space,” she added.
The Nigerian-born Jituboh, grew up in the United States. She spent her teenage years in Nigeria before returning to the United States and permanently relocating to Nigeria.
“I can do something really big and really impactful here. There’s so much more opportunity to do, to solve so many problems,” Jituboh told Forbes.
Her first project in Nigeria was to develop technologies for other companies such as AXA Mansard, Sanofi Pharmaceuticals and Airtel.
Achievements and Impact
Under Fara's leadership, Okra has achieved significant milestones:
Funding Success: Within six months of its inception, Okra secured $1 million in pre-seed funding, a notable accomplishment that underscored investor confidence in the platform's potential.
Market Integration: The platform has established partnerships with numerous banks across Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, facilitating seamless financial data integration and contributing to the digitization of financial services in Africa.
Industry Recognition: Fara's innovative contributions have been acknowledged in various publications, highlighting her role in advancing Africa's fintech landscape.
Fara's entrepreneurial approach is deeply rooted in problem-solving. She identifies challenges within her environment and leverages her technical expertise to develop solutions that drive progress. Her work with Okra exemplifies this philosophy, addressing the need for integrated financial services in Africa and empowering businesses to create more inclusive financial products.
Fara Ashiru Jituboh's trajectory from a young tech enthusiast to a leading entrepreneur in Africa's fintech sector illustrates the impact of combining technical proficiency with visionary leadership. Through Okra, she continues to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of financial services on the continent, fostering innovation, and enhancing financial inclusion.
