It is no news that the Nigerian tech ecosystem powered by the youths is evolving very fast. However, one of the amazing developments in this evolution is the inclusion and pace of innovation among undergraduates in tertiary institutions across the country. Innovation Village recently caught up with one of such Alayande Abdulwaheed Abiola, co-founder of Trep Labs an IoT and AI talent accelerator who in an interview spoke extensively on the accelerator and its mission.
Can we meet the founder of Trep Labs and what year was the business launched?
Every brand has stories to tell—stories that will not only engage, inform, surprise, delight, and impact their audience, but that will also deliver on measurable business goals. So is technology and people and we are the conduit between technology and people. TREP LABS was launched in February 2018 by Alayande Abdulwaheed Abiola and Taofeek Olalekan as the co-founder
Can you tell us about TREP Labs and what it has to offer?
TREP LABs is an IoT and AI talent accelerator with the mission to equip Africa’s leading students with IoT and AI skills to improve the existing and evolving infrastructure on the continent, provide a composite—offline & online retail outlet for hardware services, build Indigenous IoT and AI solutions to African problems,provide technical consultancy services to businesses and democratize access to IoT and AI skills.
At TREP Labs we are greatly concerned about improving productivity and maximizing existing infrastructure in Africa; hence our focus is on tools that can increase efficiency in operations. Our operation is divided into 4:
LabAfrik – A training lab that is focused on democratizing access to IoT and AI skills in Africa.
Afrigarage – An innovation lab for building indigenous solutions for African problems leveraging on IoT and AI.
Afrimakers hub – A hybrid of fixed and mobile hubs with tools where students, hobbyists and small hardware startups can bud into an amazing ecosystem.
ByteShop – An offline & online retail outlet for hardware services and democratize access to hardware kits.
The aim is to provide tools, technical know-how and connection to build a thriving community.
What motivated the setting up of Trep Lab?
The issue is not the future of democracy (or related issues such as fake news, Trump, social networking bubbles, or even cybersecurity), but the future of humanity. As we are developing more and more ways to let computers take over reasoning through adaptive learning, we are faced with an existential question: what is it – long term – that makes us human? It used to be doing calculus, playing Chess or cooking (to name a few). What if data-driven, learning algorithms can do all that? What’s the essence of being human – is it radical creativity, irrational originality, craziness and illogicality? And if so, are we then shaping our learning institutions to help humans develop and nurture exactly these skills.One of the big issues is going to be unemployment: automation, artificial intelligence, virtual reality. It seems pretty inevitable it’s going to create displacement of workers, ie unemployment. If you look at what gives people meaning in their lives, it’s three things: meaningful relationships, passionate interests, and meaningful work. Meaningful work is a very important element of someone’s identity.
One major cause of unemployment is the lack of talents with requisite skills. This is especially so in Nigeria and the African continent in general as 74% of graduates are being churned out of tertiary institutions across sub-saharan Africa. Startups on the other hand fail in less than a year because they lack access to great, affordable talents. Developing responsible sociotechnical systems will require bridging the social-technical gap that can easily emerge as social actors and technical actors speak past one another. Realizing these changes demands the ability to recruit from a talented pool of diverse candidates with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) expertise. Today, there is more demand for some STEM areas than there is available new talent and the demand continues to grow. It’s one of the reasons we need to be committed to doing all we can to encourage young people to pursue careers in STEM, particularly in Technology and Engineering.
What is unique about the services the platform has to offer?
First, we are a prototype company.
Our approach makes us unique. We are customer-centric. We uniquely tailor our solutions to bring relevance to our clients. The team is structured to include Hackers—Can build complex algorithms within the shortest possible time, Makers—Can tinker with electronics and create stuff by piecing different elements together and hustlers—you can see problems, identify perspectives and handle on-the-street conversations on how to solve problems.
When you tell us a problem as a client, we conceive the best possible solution. And then we engage in a planning process on how we are going to go about it, then the next step is the actual building with several test stages to iterations and then a launch—This is after it has been ‘TREPpped;’ tested, refined, evaluated and prototyped.
Our tactical approach with the choice of technology stack, capacity building in hardware sector and driving innovation through learning are also what set us apart from this rest
How does Trep Labs work?
I would say we are customer-centric. We uniquely tailor our solutions to bring relevance to our clients. The team is structured to include Hackers—Can build complex algorithms within the shortest possible time, Makers—Can tinker with electronics and create stuff by piecing different elements together and hustlers—you can see problems, identify perspectives and handle on-the-street conversations on how to solve problems.
What has the traction been like since its launch? (Business model and profitability)
it’s been awesome so far though it’s a challenging journey. We started about 4 months ago with 57 students in the training lab, we’ve served 9 businesses in and outside Akure with Indigenous solutions and talent outsourcing, we’ve delivered over 160 orders on electronics kits to Akure alone.
Our courses cost as low as $10 for the training and there is also a membership subscription fee for the makers’ lab. We also run a platform where people pay to use our innovation labs and we generate revenue from sales of hardware kits and other products from the innovation lab.
What were the challenges encountered and achievements recorded so far since Trep Lab launched?
Getting hardware talents is a challenge, as our engineers have to be retrained to meet the industry standard and deliver measurable business impact for our partners.
We won Akure TechUp Startup pitch challenge and one of our product won the Microsoft Imagine Cup Nigeria National Finals.
What advice do you have for prospective entrepreneurs out there?
Stay humble, stay hungry. You don’t have to wait for the right time to work on your dreams and aspirations, no matte how little,just get started.
What are the future plans for Trep Labs?
Our plan is to democratize access to IoT and AI services including talent pool in Africa.To further strengthen our plan for a skilled Africa, we are launching LabAfrik for tertiary institutions.
LabAfrik (Laboratory for African kids), student training division of TREP LABS, is an AI and IoT talent accelerator with the mission to equip Africa’s leading students with IoT and AI skills to improve the existing and evolving infrastructures.
LabAfrik IoT cohort features a year training on internet of things. 6 months online training and 6 months physical training inform of internship to partner companies and startups to work on real life products. The training is free for tertiary institutions students in Nigeria, the aim is to make sure they graduate as a junior engineer with relevant work experience. The training is free for selected students. To participate kindly register at https://labafrik.treplabs.co/registration/
What do you have to say about the evolving Nigerian start up ecosystem?
The ecosystem is massively evolving and am positive about the solutions that the start-ups will churn out ranging from productivity to inclusivity.
