Remilekun Osasona
Stephan Eyeson, a British-Ghanaian entrepreneur, is the current CEO and Founder of pan-African consumer intelligence gathering firm, Survey54.
He was born to Ghanaian parents in London. Eyeson’s first shot at entrepreneurship began in his early years at university, when his dream to become a professional basketball player was shattered.
He started a basketball business at the age of 19, in which the venture failed, so he tried the data business instead.
“Data in Africa is such a prevalent problem, in a sense of when you are going to start up a business, it is hard for you to get consumer data on say ‘how many people eat out in Lagos every day? what is the transactional value? what are the types of things that people eat? what do they want to eat etc?’ All these things are available in the West but for people who want to move into Africa for business, how do they get their data to make their decisions and how do we make it really easy for them and not just for a startup but for even governments and larger businesses,” says Eyeson.
At the completion of his master’s program in innovation and management from Loughborough University in the United Kingdom (UK), Eyeson joined Survey Monkey, an online survey development cloud-based software as a service company, as part of the team responsible for building their enterprise function in London as well as looking after customers in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).
After he had learnt the nitty-gritty of data business, he decided to branch out to start his own company to offer a more robust and tailored solution for the African market.
This Survey54 is a market research outfit that uses AI-powered insights to collect data and interpret consumer habits.
The company was launched in 2019 to help companies understand African consumer tendencies and how it can affect their marketing plans and overall bottom line. Survey54 currently runs its operations mostly out of the UK and South Africa but its methods are fitted to global participation.
At Survery54, they use various mobile and AI-backed technology to automate the consumer research problem and also leverage different channels such as mobile app, USSD, Voice and SMS to reach respondents in rural areas and those within cities. They are able to get respondents within minutes as they have a large database of participants across four major countries. Survey54 is purely focused on Africa which means they have templates that are tailored towards each country.
In synchronisation with the company name, Survey54 is active in all 54 countries of Africa, but their highest areas of data insights are Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Ghana.
The sectors that have so far benefited from our intelligence are FMCGs, Fintech, Healthcare and Food & Retail. Our clients tend to be international companies operating or making an entry into the African economy, but local organizations are very much in play as well.
Eyeson has his eyes fixed on moving into the US markets as a long-term plan, but for now, the goal is transferring the abundant and ubiquitous asset of data in Africa into millions for his startup.
