February 27, 2021: Today makes it six years since we started ID Africa.
That’s a mighty long time in the dangerous world of startups, where according to reports, failure rate is 61% in Nigeria, 54% across Africa, and about 50% in the US within the first five years of operations. And six years is a particularly long time in the volatile world of marketing ‘agencies’ and digital media companies.
It’s been six years since ATG wrote this moving piece that announced the birth of IDA. Six years since we transformed from a tiny department in a small-sized PR firm, to an independent digital agency, and then repositioned in 2019 as a ‘marketing communications, media and tech company’.
You see, our repositioning was a strategic shift to capture more value from the universe and future-proof our business, by focusing on three key pillars that make us unique: an understanding of brand marketing and creative communications, ownership of valuable media assets with active communities, and the application of modern tech for product development.
In the six years of IDA’s existence, we’ve taken some serious beatings and battering, from macro-economic conditions that threatened to shut us down (Hello, Messers Exchange Rate, Inflation and Recession 🙄), to a global pandemic that literally tried to kill us all!
Through it all, however, we were unbroken! We won the most important battle of all – survival! We survived. We made it.
This year, I really have nothing to brag about. Only testimonies:
1. That in 2020, we managed to grow revenue by 102% from our 2019 performance (which was a 32% increase from 2018 figures).
2. That in 2020, we didn’t have any layoffs, pay cuts or furloughed team members.
3. That we ended 2020 and kicked off 2021, looking to even hire more people to help us do better for our clients and customers.
4. That today, our people are healthy, happy and inspired.
Managing to do all this in the middle of a panoramic… errm… pandemic, is nothing short of a miracle! And for that, I am truly grateful – to God our maker, to the Founder and our chief adviser, to the customers who trust us with their brands, assets and reputation, and to the partners who support us.
Most of all, I’m grateful to the twenty-plus ID Africans who sailed this 72-month-old ship through the wild waters of the past year. Thank you for riding with me.
Together, we go again, on another fantastic voyage around the sun.
Godspeed!