Alerzo is a business-to-business startup that connects informal retailers directly with local and international suppliers of FMCG goods, therefore eliminating the issue of inefficient distribution systems most street-side vendors contend with when stocking up. With a focus on cities in the southwestern states, Alerzo has managed to build a network of over 100,000 mom-and-pop store owners who stock their shops’ inventory swiftly using Alerzo’s digital platform. If you’re an informal retailer in Ekiti, Ibadan, Abeokuta, and other southwestern cities, you may want to beat the inconsistent inventory availability and the inefficient delivery system you experience when stocking up your shop by trying Alerzo. Read on to find the locations of Alerzo branches in Nigeria.
The list of Alerzo branches in Nigeria would be mentioned below:
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Alerzo Headquarters Ibadan
Address: Alerzo Place, Ring Road, Challenge, Ibadan, Oyo State
Email ID: hello@alerzo.com
Phone Number: 08000253796, 070025379627
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Alerzo Lagos Branch
Address: No. 39, Adeola Odeku Street, Victoria Island, Eti-Osa, Lagos State
Email ID: hello@alerzo.com
Phone Number: 08000253796, 070025379627
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Short Summary about Alerzo
The founder of Alerzo is Adewale Opaleye, who spent most of his childhood growing up in Ibadan. As a kid, he saw how his mother struggled to stock her both shops all by herself. He witnessed firsthand how mom-and-pop shops like his mother’s faced the problem of an inefficient distribution system that resulted in inconsistent inventory availability, opaque pricing, and other logistic concerns. This is what motivated Adewale to start Alerzo to help small businesses in the informal sector, especially women-led retail shops, connect with local and international suppliers of consumer goods.
In 2018, with the idea of Alerzo in black and white, Adewale approached investors to get funds to start up the company. The initial investors that saw sense in Alerzo’s offerings were a Singapore-based fund manager, Signal Hill, and Baobab Network, an Africa-focused accelerator based in London. In 2019, Alerzo officially kicked off in Ibadan, the same place he witnessed the gap retailers in the informal sector face when stocking up inventory for their shops. In subsequent seeding rounds, Alerzo raised over $20 million from several investment companies like Nosara Capital and FJ Labs.
With the headquarters of Alerzo in Ibadan, the startup set out to help street-side vendors and shops in the ancient city access household suppliers quicker and more efficiently. Using the Alerzo digital marketplace, these retailers can place orders for FMCG products which would be delivered to their stores in less than 10 hours. The company then expanded its services to meet the logistics needs of informal sector retailers in other tier-2 to tier-4 southwestern cities like Ekiti and Abeokuta, to name a few.
The company further expanded its reach to Lagos, opening a physical branch on Victoria Island in 2021. According to the Techcrunch website, the company’s management claimed to have built a network of over 100,000 street-side vendors who use the Alerzo platform to get swift delivery of FMCG goods directly to their storefronts.
Alerzo serves as a direct link between multinational distributions of consumer brands like Unilever and Procter & Gamble with the mom-and-pop store owners on the network. With Alerzo in charge of the supply chain and delivery, orders are processed and delivered to storefronts within 10 hours of a street-side vendor placing an order on the platform.
This last-mile distribution platform has processed over 2 million orders since its inception. With Alerzo owning and operating its full-stack tech-driven supply chain and logistics consisting of qualified personnel, over 200 vehicles and 20 warehouses, the thousands of small businesses who use this service need not take a day off to visit the central market, pay transportation and deal with hauling a large amount of inventory back to their stores.
Aside from the logistics aspect, the Alerzo digital platform also provides informal retailers with the capability to receive and make cashless payments, track their respective store profitability, buy airtime, pay bills and perform peer-to-peer transfers.
Alerzo, through its office in Singapore, studies how last-mile distribution is done in Southeast Asia and India, identifying salient best practices to adapt to the Nigerian market.
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How to Get Started with Alerzo
If you are convinced that your small business can benefit from the services offered by Alerzo, follow the steps below to get started:
- Search for Alerzoshop on Google Play if your device is an Android or the App Store if you use an IOS device
- Download the app
- Upon completion of the download, launch the app
- Register on the app by following the prompts
- After successfully creating your account on Alerzoshop, proceed to place orders for the FMCG goods for your business
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What You Need to Know About the Founder and CEO of Alerzo
Having explained what Alerzo’s offerings to small businesses are, we think we should briefly discuss who the brain behind this B2B startup is. Adewale Opaleye is the founder and CEO of Alerzo, starting the company in 2018 but commencing operations the following year. Adewale spent his childhood in Ibadan where he obtained his elementary education.
Upon completion of secondary school, Adewale enrolled in Ladoke Akintola University of Technology in 2013 to study Engineering Physics/Applied Physics. However, in 2016, he dropped out of school without obtaining his bachelor’s degree. Later that 2016, Adewale traveled to China to study Computer Science at the South China University of Technology. Two years later, in 2018, he dropped out again from the university.
Now, let’s discuss his work experience before Alerzo. According to his LinkedIn profile, he worked for Fasaja for 5 months, starting from December 2016 until April 2017. Afterward, he joined KiKUU Online Shopping Mall as a Contract Designer, leaving the position in May 2017. In 2018, he started Alerzo. He remained the CEO of Alerzo from then till date.
Adewale has earned several awards for his work at Alerzo. Notable among them is the Fintech Personality Leadership Price which he received at the 2021 edition of the African Prize for Leadership Excellence Award Ceremony held in Lagos.