WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:56.000 Foreign. Welcome to the GeoMob podcast where we discuss geo innovation in any and all forms, whether for fun or profit. Welcome back everyone to another episode of the GeoMob podcast. Today we are turning our focus to, you know, part of the world that we haven't seen concentrated on that much here at geomab. That's Africa. My guest today is Timbo Drayson and he is the founder of a company called Okhi which is working on addressing in Africa and in places like Africa, around the world, where, you know, they don't perhaps have the same addressing schemes that we have in Europe. So he's going to take us through all the challenges that they're facing and how they're solving it. Timbo, welcome to the show. 2 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:59.000 Thanks so much, Ed. Excited to be here. 3 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:06.000 Briefly introduce yourself and then let's get exactly into what exactly OKHI is accomplishing. 4 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:39.000 Great. So yeah, as you said, I'm Timbo, one of the co founders and CEO of Okhi and my background is always been on the technology side, so I launch Google Maps across the Europe, Middle east and Africa. While at Google, I also took a product called Chromecast from idea to launch, but ultimately moved to Africa over 10 years ago to live and breathe this problem around physical addressing. And excited to share more and learn from the community. 5 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:55.000 Well, let's dive in. What exactly is the problem that you're solving? Many of our listeners, of course, are tuning in from Europe and probably don't have firsthand experience with the of environments that you're operating in. So take us through it, please. 6 00:01:55.000 --> 00:03:14.000 Yeah, so in a nutshell, OKHI is a global addressing network and our mission is to put a billion people on the map. And that's because the problem ultimately is that billions of people in the world don't have a formal physical address. Most of emerging markets don't have road names or building names on numbers. And so formal addresses don't exist and formal proof of addresses don't exist either. So that means consumers don't generally have access to critical services. And it could be as simple as getting a delivery to your door. It could be getting an ambulance to your door, or it could be getting a proof of address to open up a bank account. And that also has a big impact on the business side. So whether you are that delivery business, that emergency service or that financial service, it has huge financial impact onto your business for not ultimately being able to locate your customers. And all of that rolls up into a larger economic issue for governments. And MIT did a report in India that estimated that half a of its GDP is lost as a result of the lack of formal fiscal addressing infrastructure. And I'd actually argue that it's much bigger than that, but it's a pretty good start. 7 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:40.000 Okay, so right. Over the years we have had several different people who are, you're not obviously not the first person to recognize this problem. We've had several different presentations about different solutions. I think probably most famously what three words, what is the OK approach and how are you taking it on and what's different? 8 00:03:40.000 --> 00:05:43.000 So I think the key thing about our mission is that we focus on mapping people, not places. And that's really the critical focus that we have driven through the business over the last decade to sort of break that down a little bit more cleanly. If you think about Google Maps, Google Maps is great at finding businesses, it's great at finding addresses where they exist and places. But you can't find people on Google Maps, right? Like a delivery company can't go to Google Maps and say help me know where this person lives. A bank can't go to Google Maps and say I need a proof of address. Can you determine where this person exists or resides? And so we've really focused on the layer that sits above it. If you think about it, you've got a mapping layer and you've got Google Maps, OpenStreetMaps, et cetera. Then you've got what I think about as a places layer and that can be buildings and other areas and identifiers. And then you've got the people and sort of businesses that sit on top of it. And Google Maps and others are focused on the business side, but we are really focused on the people side. And the reason around that is that knowing where someone lives a proof of address we see as a unit of trust. It's only when you know someone lives that ultimately you can trust it. That's why global anti money laundering requirements are that you've got to be able to collect a proof of address to, you know, open up bank account accounts and transfer money, you know, cross borders is because if anything goes wrong, or let's say someone borrows money and doesn't pay it back, you can actually find them. So it's an accountability layer. Knowing where someone lives that doesn't exist for half of the world. And I would argue actually it's not just an emerging market problem. You know, this is, this also is immigrants, refugees, homeless people. I mean the problem also exists in 9 00:05:43.000 --> 00:06:05.000 developed markets as well as someone who, 20 years ago I moved to the UK and it took me about six months to open a bank account because I was, you know, staying with friends and I didn't have proof of address. You know, I wasn't on my. I had to get my name on the Thames Water bill, which frankly a bit of a bizarre system. But anyway. So how are you? 10 00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:36.000 Well on. Well on that in terms of the utility bill, and this is how this works in the UK and most of other developed markets, is that you show some kind of utility or bank statement in the last 90 days, which traditionally was actually a good proof that you lived there because it was a physical item that went through the letterbox that confirmed and verified that you lived there. Now everything's PDF and so it's so easy for anyone to fake a proof of address. 11 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:41.000 Sure. I mean it's one with AI. You fake this in about 10 seconds exactly. 12 00:06:41.000 --> 00:06:54.000 So while we're focused on emerging markets and AFCA is our initial sort of focused countries or continent, I think the opportunity is much bigger. 13 00:06:54.000 --> 00:07:08.000 But so how are you solving it? Take us through kind of the technology a bit like, what is it? It's an app or it's a explain a bit. 14 00:07:08.000 --> 00:08:55.000 Yes. Our vision is that anyone with a mobile phone will be able to get a digital address and a digital proof of address. And the core of it starts with an Okhi address. An Okhi address will consist of a structured address if it exists. But if it doesn't, then we supplement that with critical information that's able to still locate the customer if there isn't the addressing identifiers. And so that is a GPS point that can help someone get close, a photo of a gate that can help someone or property know that they're in the right place and some text information so if they want to get to a specific floor or building. And so we proved that you can actually knock on anyone's door with those three bits of information. But we then provide this proof layer on top of that that essentially uses the location data in the phone in a privacy sensitive way to see that the person is actually spending time at that location. And we have built our own proprietary AI models that are now able to determine that this person spent enough time. We can then provide this digital proof of address certificate which we can then provide to our main customer of the day is financial services. And so we sell it as a SDK that sits inside the mobile banking app. So we are not doing this within our own app. We sit inside the mobile app of our customers and we then use the location data through that app and we are then able to run that verification process. 15 00:08:55.000 --> 00:09:15.000 Very nice. Yeah, so you mentioned some of your customers. So this is not R and D, this is actually live and you have large financial organizations using it, integrating it, paying you to use it. Take us through kind of the story of the business. What is the status currently? 16 00:09:15.000 --> 00:11:13.000 Yeah, so we have millions and millions of users, have an OK high address and a proof of address. We have done address verifications, we've issued proof of address certificates in over 90 countries around the world. So the solution works out the box anywhere. And right now we are ultimately focused on Africa and most of our customer base is in Nigeria and it's fintechs and banks. And so we have some of the largest fintechs in Nigeria for example, and traditional banks who are now using our digital proof of address certificate to do a few things. One is to be able to tick box the compliance requirements to provide that proof of address. The second is to be able to increase their credit revenue. So a huge amount of potential revenue is lost by defaulted loans. And in Africa emerging markets the default rate can be 20, 30% because again why people can ultimately borrow money and they can't be found, there's no accountability, so they don't pay it back. And so we're starting to see a significant impact on being able to reduce the default rates for our customers. And then the third is fraud. So knowing where someone's located is a very, very helpful signal to be able to say did this large transaction happen in a trusted location? And if not, let's flag this up. But location data is missing from a huge amount of fraud and transaction monitoring analysis. It's very difficult to detect if someone's taken over an account. But we're providing critical location data to reduce fraud for our customers. 17 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:23.000 And does the end consumer really need to do anything or they just kind of install the banking app and it's kind of running in the background. 18 00:11:23.000 --> 00:12:46.000 So we act similar to most of these other identity verification apps, which I'm sure everyone's been through. So as part of the onboarding process, an SDK loads of some third party provider that's doing the identity verification. You have to take a photo and move your face to do that. And so we sit in a similar place. It's an SDK, it looks and feels like our customer's app, but it's powered by okay, hi. And the customer essentially creates a digital address as part of the onboarding process and then we require them to provide the location permissions that we need and they also have to opt in and agree to our terms of conditions. And then, you know, ultimately the product does its, does its magic and we take two to eight days to verify the address, depending on the user and their movements. But you know, it's a very, very low friction way to verify an address. Generally the industry is seeing about a 50% drop off when they ask for a physical document because it's a hassle, right? You don't have it there and then, and so we're able to significantly increase that conversion rate and reduce that drop off to enable our customers to acquire more of their end customers. 19 00:12:46.000 --> 00:13:02.000 What happens when the person moves? I mean, so if, you know, I sign up the phone, you know, you establish that I'm in location A, and then imagine a week later I move, you know, to a different city or something. How does that play out there? 20 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:16.000 So firstly, this is a global problem, right? So all current proof of address solutions, when you provide your utility bill in the last 90 days does not help the bank know. 21 00:13:16.000 --> 00:13:19.000 Of course, now that you say that 22 00:13:19.000 --> 00:14:37.000 makes sense and in fact it's a really, it's a really annoying problem when people move, you have to now update your 30, 40 different apps and services, tell all your friends. And so this whole actual decentralized way of managing addressing is really broken. And so our centralized solution means that if you move, you tell us and we will magically update everyone that you've moved with your permission. But also we go one step further because we're able to provide this perpetual verification. So a new product that we're introducing is called Protect first in the World, which enables perpetual address verification. And so we're able to periodically check that the person's still at their address. And again, we do this in a very privacy sensitive way. And if the person has moved, we don't know where they've moved to, but we can start detecting that they're not spending any time at that address anymore. And that means we can alert the end consumer or we can alert our customers and say, hey, look, we think this person's moved. Will you get them to update their address? They do that and then we can update everyone else. 23 00:14:37.000 --> 00:14:56.000 I see. And so then presumably as a result, the banks, the financial services could have much more confidence in who this customer is and thus I assume much better kind of abilities to process a loan and things and provide services to this customer 100%. 24 00:14:56.000 --> 00:16:02.000 Again, it all comes down to trust. You know, when you know not just where your customer was located at the point of onboarding 12 months ago, but you actually know where they are today, that puts you in a much stronger position. So when that person does come for a loan or a credit card or something else, you are much more likely. And by the way, this isn't just consumers and retails, this like retail banking. This also is very much connected to SMBs which is sort of at the heart of most developing markets economies. Tens of millions of small to medium businesses exist in Nigeria. Most of them are sort of one or two person businesses. It's a small kiosk on the side of the road and so that's this. Our same technology and products can be used to verify the person and the business and the person is operating at the business location. And so this can also really help B2B credit facilitation and things like that as well. 25 00:16:02.000 --> 00:17:27.000 That's fantastic. I mean this is one of the things that I find so interesting about geospatial and GeoMob is like, you know, of course we often have talks about people who are like, oh, I've built a new, a better GIS system or you know, AI in the GIS system. But what for me is most exciting is when we take these new location based technologies and integrate them into kind of other industries and by doing that open up, as you say, open up the trust and open up all kinds of new possibilities that previously would never have been possible. How is the business going? I have to ask as an entrepreneur myself who has, I have my own small business and I have occasionally had the pleasure of integrating with let's say some large, you know, corporate customers. And it's not always so simple. Let's say that you know, for the, the agile startup to maneuver and I can imagine in, in financial services it's, it's even more complex and you know, so how do you find that side of things? How is, how is, are banks receptive to these kind of new ideas? And I can imagine it's a real pain to get something into a banking app. 26 00:17:27.000 --> 00:19:18.000 Yeah, I mean there is a lot of demand because of the, you know, the size of the problem that we're solving and the impact that we have on both that top line revenue and that, you know, bottom line costs. And so we do see a lot of demand. But as you say, there is a long sales procurement process when you are selling into any enterprise, especially banks. So we have primarily seen the initial uplift and uptake of the business by the fintechs who obviously can move faster and have still decent volumes. And so we're now live with two traditional banks but we have won deals with five more and we expect all of them to be live before the end of the year. It is a lot of work and you have to be patient. But it is also a double edged sword in the sense that once you are live, the switching cost for them to find another provider. And currently we are not aware of anyone that does full digital proof of address and this perpetual protect system. But if there was another vendor, it's a long, long time and a very painstaking process for the bank to also switch you out, not just on the technical side but on the procurement side. So once you're in and live, it's very, very sticky. And we're able to drive all our growth and build our whole database through these banking services without any marketing costs. And so the way to think about it is sort of all of that potential cost and effort to go into direct consumer marketing is really going into our B2B, you know, sales. 27 00:19:18.000 --> 00:19:47.000 And is there kind of a network effect? So if the end consumer, you know, he's with bank A and he gets verified and everything and then you know, some he's also using some other financial service, is that kind of a separate entry or are you able to kind of reuse the data across the customers, so to speak, so that you kind of reach a tipping point where everyone, everyone has at least one or two touch points with OK high and thus it becomes kind of the standard. 28 00:19:47.000 --> 00:20:52.000 Yeah, I mean I'm a network effects geek. I find it fascinating, you know, 70% of the sort of value that the tech industry has been built because it's been sort of dominated by a few of these big players is mainly driven by network effects. And it can deliver a huge amount of impact, not just sort of upside for the business. And so yeah, we're a two sided platform that's connecting the consumer and their address and proof of address with the business is that need it. And today our focus is financial services, but there's lots of opportunity to offer that to other businesses. And certainly the more users and businesses that join the network, the more valuable it is. And what might take two to eight days to verify and address the first time, if we're able to have signals that that person stood at their address, we can offer that instantly. And so that provides a, you know, a total game changer to the market and enables a lot of value to the end consumer, but also to the business as well. 29 00:20:52.000 --> 00:21:30.000 In general, what, what is the state of mapping, be it Google Maps, be it overstreetmap, be it others in in these kind of countries because sometimes, you know, I browse around on OpenStreetMap and it looks like, you know, it's shocking how well mapped some of these places are, like in some cases as well as Europe. But is that really the case or. It's very hard for me to judge. But I also know that these places are probably much more dynamic in terms of new construction and changes. And what's your, for our European listeners, like what is the quality of something like Google Maps in a place like Nigeria? 30 00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:35.000 When you're talking about mapping, are you talking about the sort of base layer? 31 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:49.000 Yeah, exactly. On top of that, I guess both, I mean as a consumer, if I, you know, if I were teleported right now to Lagos in Nigeria, would I be able to use Google Maps to get around? Or no. Or, or. 32 00:21:49.000 --> 00:23:40.000 So there's a, there's a couple of parts always to this one is the sort of base layer mapping quality and I think that's actually on a global level. Very good now because of all the satellite imagery and the quality of that. So that wasn't the case 10 years ago. There were a lot of roads that were missing, fundamental, you know, tarmac roads that just weren't on the maps. And I think that's now being, that's now being solved. But the problem is, is the location that you are trying to get to discoverable or searchable or findable on Google Maps, I. E. Is if it's a business, can you find them on Google Maps? Businesses are generally a little bit better. Or if it's an address, can you find it? And it's very varied according to if you're in the more affluent parts of the capital city, then there is certainly some coverage around addresses and building names and numbers, et cetera. And so that can work. But as soon as you get out of the major urban areas, there's a huge drop off and most people are navigating whether you're in a city or not by, by landmarks. It's like, you know, once you get to the school, turn left and with a second gate on your right, that's, that's people's addresses. In fact, the favorite I got once traveling in Kenya, someone said, well, once you get into the village, turn left where the goats used to graze. And so I, so I got to the village and it wasn't obvious where the goats used to graze. But I asked someone and they said, oh, they used to graze over there. And I turned left and it worked. But you know, that, that, that is Generally how kind of quote unquote addressing is done because it's by points of interest and relative direction 33 00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:53.000 and is that perceived as a problem by the local society? Is like, is this something they're working to improve? Or that's just, that's how they do addresses and that's, that's how they plan to keep doing address. 34 00:23:53.000 --> 00:25:28.000 It's just the status quo. Right? Like if you, if I asked anyone in the uk, even around like or, or Europe around, is proof of address a problem? You know, no, I just find some you know, bank statement or something and it's, and it's fine and it works and ticks the box. But like fundamentally there, there are, there are actually quite deep problems. There's a lot of fraud and there's a lot of things and I think generally we're sort of quite as human beings accepting of the status quo. And unless you've experienced what it's like operating in a place where there is like a very good functioning addressing system and how easy it is to get around and the fact that you know, if you're getting a delivery to your door, it doesn't take 3.1 phone calls, which is what we now know for someone to find your, your house or invariably, you know, an ambulance driver. Like part of the reason why I really focused on this as a problem was when I was traveling around Africa on a sabbatical from Google, I was talking to the Red Cross asking about sort of addressing and movements and, and the driver told me that just two days before she got so lost trying to find a person's house that she arrived too late and the person was dead. So do they understand that the root cause is that there isn't an addressing system? No. But does it have a huge impact, a detrimental impact on everyone's lives across, you know, both consumers and businesses and government services? 100%. 35 00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:55.000 Okay, well looking forward, I mean I know you've been working on OK now for 10 years. So I think it's, it sounds like it's kind of the classic case of the, the ten year overnight success story, right? Because it feels like you kind of reached a tipping point in the last year with getting into some of the banks and. But so what's next? How do you see this going forward? 36 00:25:55.000 --> 00:26:40.000 So you know, coming back to our mission, our mission is to put a billion people on the map and we starting to make a dent on that. But we have a very, very long journey to get to that point and I think there's a few key areas where we Want to continue to grow the business and push the impact that we're starting to deliver. So the first is we're seeing a critical mass of success in Nigeria. And so we're just doubling down on that and supporting all the financial services and beyond that to start using the addressing technology. 37 00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:59.000 Timbo, please feel free to brag a little bit about. I mean, first of all, for the context of our listeners, like how big is the market in Nigeria? And I know some of your numbers are really impressive, like how many verifications are you doing per day? And things like that. I mean, give us a sense of the scale of it. 38 00:26:59.000 --> 00:27:06.000 So Nigeria is a very large market. There's 220 million people. 39 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:10.000 That's like all of Western Europe. All Western Europe. 40 00:27:10.000 --> 00:28:40.000 And what's even more impressive is it's set to be over 400 million by 2050. So it's going to be more populous than the U.S. it will be the third most populous country in the world after India and China. And so it's a very large market. And out of that 220 million, 60 million are banked. And so we are onboarding most of those financial services and getting access to that 60 million. It took us three years to onboard our first 100,000 users. That was I think, 10, 10 years ago, but now we're doing that in just a few days. And so we are building this database very, very fast through the financial services and that's why it's working. And so we want to keep focusing the business on that. But also, as I said, we've done verifications in over 90 countries and we see demand in not just Africa, but other emerging markets. And so we are fulfilling that demand where it's there. We are enabling businesses anywhere in the world to be able to start using the product and service. And so that requires a bit of internationalization support. But we do expect to start seeing some growth outside of Nigeria in the second half of this year. 41 00:28:40.000 --> 00:29:46.000 Congratulations. I mean, this is really impressive. I mean, that's not minor when you're, you know, getting hundred thousands of people, you know, every few days. So very nice, very nice. Well, you know, I do have one request though, Timba, is that at some point you're going to make it back to Europe and you're going to speak at a GeoMob event, I hope in London or elsewhere. And you're gonna, you know, really be able to show us this. I think this is such a cool project. You know, as I said, we've had many presentations over the years of people who have recognized this problem of the lack of addresses, the lack of baby wing ability to consistently refer to places. It sounds like you've really cracked it in terms of getting the critical mass and getting those partnerships, which I'm sure must be very painful and require a lot of patience, but to really integrate with the partners and get them to deliver it to the consumers. So congratulations, very impressive to you and the team. 42 00:29:46.000 --> 00:32:39.000 Thank you. It's been a journey, but it's also been a hugely motivating one. Even in the last 10 years, seeing how the industry shifted and adopted, whether it's from the technology side or people being able to use their technology and smartphone adoption and mapping literacy. And we're seeing this shift and it really does feel that both on the problem side and on the sort of solution technology and AI side, it is the right time for digital addressing to exist in the world. And actually what I get so excited about is when you fast forward 5, 10 years and you project and see how autonomous services and AI agents are going to continue to run. The need for digital addressing is only going to go and increase and countries that don't have any kind of addressing infrastructure are only going to be left behind. You can't have autonomous vehicles and autonomous robots delivering things if there isn't a very clear way to be able to just provide that end destination point. And today to being able to so go back and forth over phone calls between, you know, your driver and you is obviously not going to work in a, in a more autonomous world. And, and I think if you project that also towards what's happening with AI agents and financial services, this, this whole thing around trust is becoming like a global, you know, global problem. I mean, it's the reason why Sam Altman has also co founded a company called World, which is a proof of human network, is to be able to determine whether this person's a real human being, is this transaction that's happening on behalf of an agent, you know, has actually been approved by a real person, a real, a real human being. And we believe that there's never been a more important time to anchor the digital world to the physical world. And obviously, you know, location data and your physical address is that anchor. And so we think that this is the start of actually a very, very big shift in wave that's happening. And it's happening in front of us in terms of these AI agents and grow faster than I think anyone could ever imagine. And it's exciting, but it's also terrifying at the same time. And so we want to be able to just continue building this thin proof of addressing infrastructure layer that can provide trust and enable these digital services that are providing so much value to also reduce the fraud that's happening. Because we're in a very exciting time, but it's also a terrifying time. 43 00:32:39.000 --> 00:33:07.000 It's very exciting. Yeah. Well, all I can say again is congratulations to you and your colleagues. It's exciting. Hopefully you can reduce the amount of terror involved. But Timbo, if people, if this conversation has raised questions, if people want to learn more, if people want to get in touch with you, what is the best way for them to do that? 44 00:33:07.000 --> 00:34:06.000 So, yeah, I'd love to hear from people. I think I was really excited about coming on the podcast because the whole geo community, geomo community, I think is so valuable and there's still so much that we have to, to learn. And so if people are interested in understanding more or can see applications of how our product technology can be used again, don't just think about it as sort of developing markets. I think there's huge value in terms of starting to use our products and services for supporting refugees and homeless people and digital nomads. And, you know, there's a lot of other use cases. So please get in touch. My email address is timbokhigh.com and so sure, Ed, you can put it into the notes. I'm always impressed when people give their email address because I'm listening and I'm like, would I give my email address? But I really want to encourage people to get in touch because I'd love to hear from people and collaborate on this. 45 00:34:06.000 --> 00:34:39.000 Okay, well, listeners, I encourage you to get in touch and check out what Okhi is doing. I'm pleased that we were able to bring the focus to what's happening in the emerging markets and that perhaps, you know, not, you know, not everyone in Europe is perhaps watching that closely. I mean, it's hugely exciting and very interesting application of geospatial technologies. So congrats. Simbo, thank you for taking the time for coming on the show. 46 00:34:39.000 --> 00:34:43.000 Thanks so much, Ed. Loved it. 47 00:34:43.000 --> 00:35:09.000 Thanks for joining us today on the GeoMob podcast. We hope you enjoyed the discussion. You can get the show notes over on the website, which is@thegeomob.com and while you're there, you can sign up for our monthly newsletter and find links to our accounts on Mastodon and LinkedIn. So you can stay up to date on all our upcoming events. We hope to see you at an event soon, 48 00:35:09.000 --> 00:35:22.000 Sam.