Lori Systems expands to the rest of Africa, hires African experts

Lori Systems has announced the appointment of Uche Ogboi as its Chief Operating Officer and Efayomi Carr as the Head of Strategic Finance.

Lori is a Nairobi-based logistics coordination platform that connects cargo owners and transporters founded in 2016 by Josh Sandler and Ernest G. Ngaruiya.

In 2017, Lori won the grand prize of $25,000 at Techcrunch's Startup Battlefield Africa. The startup serves both transporters and cargo owners by handling invoicing and payment, as well as providing real-time tracking and access to capital through fuel financing.

With offices in Kenya and Uganda, Lori plans to expand beyond East Africa. Possibly starting with West Africa—Nigeria, where it only has contact persons to address transport and cargo inquiries.

The appointment of Uche and Efayomi took effect on July 29, 2019, and they are expected to aid Lori's expansion plans. Uche will bring to bear her experience in scaling companies across the African continent, while Efayomi will focus on expansion efforts surrounding the company’s financial products.

Josh Sandler, Co-founder and CEO of Lori systems, said:

Uche and Efayomi are among the most impressive leaders on the continent, and I am absolutely thrilled about what this means for our business as we continue to rapidly scale our operations across Africa and beyond. Their track record with high growth companies make them an extremely valuable part of our core management team.

Meet Uche Ogboi

Uche was the Principal at EchoVC Partners—a Pan-Africa and tech-enabled venture capital firm—until June 2019. During her time there, she helped grow the firm’s portfolio, investing in companies across the world and across various sectors including logistics, healthcare, fintech, telecoms and agriculture.

Uche had also worked as an investment banker with Citigroup, where she managed the bank’s small and medium enterprises fund and she was involved in structuring the bank’s agriculture lending initiative.

Lori embodies the spirit of opportunity on the continent for high-growth startups, and I am so impressed by the strong team and what the company has achieved in a short amount of time. I am delighted to see where this challenge takes me and how we will grow this company together to drive value for customers and help Lori achieve its mission of lowering the cost of goods in Africa.

Uche, COO of Lori, said

Meet Efayomi Carr

Born and brought up in the United States, Efayomi joins Lori systems from Quona Capital—a venture capital firm that invests in growth-stage financial technology companies. At Quona, Efayomi served as Senior Associate and supported investments across Africa.

Before Quona, Carr worked with 8 Miles LLP, a London-based private equity firm that invests in Africa. He has also worked with the Boston Consulting Group in New York and Nigeria covering financial services. He also had a six-month stint as Jumia's Head of Marketplace for Nigeria in Lagos.

What's more...

Lori systems solves the problem of the high cost of goods across Africa. In East Africa, where it first launched, the relative cost of moving goods is very high. As a result of this, 75% of a product cost goes to logistics (compared with the 6% reported in the U.S.). And this challenge is prevalent across Africa.

Lori increases the efficiency in the logistics space and lowers the cost of goods in Africa by eliminating customer pain points along the cargo journey with new technologies, superior user experience and cost-savings.