Our startup (fuel point) will save nigerian businesses lots of money on energy related expense

Hello All,

My name is Saviour. i am the founder of a start-up company and we just launched a new mobile app we believe will benefit Nigerian businesses by helping them save lots of money on energy.

The name of the app is Fuel Point, it is a mobile app for buying and getting supplies of petroleum products online e.g petrol, diesel, kerosene, gas etc. Fuel Point allows buyers like individuals, banks, hotels, industries and filling stations buy fuel from a large list of registered accredited suppliers around the country.
You can think of it as an uber for petroleum products. There are different apps for the buyer and also for the supplier. Both apps are available on playstore and apple store.

The advantage this app offers businesses is that they can get fuel at a cheaper rate from a list of suppliers with a lower price tag. Also it offers them the ease and flexibility that online shopping offers.
For suppliers they can expand their business nationwide and make more money since the app gives them a global reach around the country.

You can find more information about Fuel Point from the website:

http://www.fuelpoint.co

We would appreciate it if you could review and publish an article on this mobile app.
:slight_smile:

2 Likes

Good stuff. But I have a few questions:

  1. When you say businesses can get fuel at cheaper rates. How much cheaper? Is the cost of delivery inclusive in the term ā€˜cheaperā€™.

  2. Do you plan on putting any quality control in place? Bad fuel messes up car/generator engines.

  3. For now, donā€™t you think you are targeting too many people?

  4. As with any online platform where customers interact directly with the people offering the services. Having a plan to mitigate platform leakage is not an option. Have you got one?

1 Like

Hi ikp,

Thanks for the response.

Question 1:
The prices of the petroleum products are set by the suppliers themselves and where they supply to is also set by the suppliers. As is with all market that involve buying and selling, some seller prices are always lesser than others. Right now we have suppliers that supply diesel at N238 per litre through out lagos and some that sell at N245 per litre. That is a N7 difference. If i were to buy 33,000 litres from the supplier that supplied at N238 that would save me N231,000. Cost of delivery are not charged, and the suppliers registering into the system are aware of this.

Question 2.
Quality control is an inevitable problem when it comes to buying petroleum products online or offline. This is how we currently takle this problem.

a. During checkout buyers are first of all warned not to pay the supplier any advance payment until the product has arrive (this is to prevent fraud)
b. Buyers are advised during checkout to inspect the quality of the product before making payment. (this is to verify the quality of the product)
c. After a completed delivery, suppliers are rated by buyers, also a buyer can choose to review a supplier. This ratings are visible to prospective buyers who might want to petronize a supplier. In addition the system by default lists suppliers based on highest rating and number of orders (so the most trusted suppliers stay at the top of the list)
d. Supplier are accredited and licensed NUPENG members
e. Pay on delivery is the only payment option we allow for now (although the system already supports credit/debit card payments, this though will never be allowed for buyers)

Question 3.
Since a supplier chooses where he supplies to, even if its just a single local government in a state. The market is therefore broken drown into smaller chunks where a person in a specific city can buy from suppliers in that same city.

Question 4.

We have though about it carefully and realized that since we cant handle the logistics. Contacts of supplier and buyers have to be exchanged.
Our bets though are on this simple but yet realistic human behaviour (people will always want to patronize things that benefit them more, especially when it comes to pricing)

if a supplier and buyer were to make deals to boycott the system and buy from each other. We know at some point that relationship would probably break (may not happen though),
at some point the buyer would be tempted to see it another supplier could supply them at a cheaper rate than the previous. and if that cheaper supplier had good rating. the buyer would most likely reuse the system again with another supplier. Besides we know people will always use the system. ā€œSo if one goes another will comeā€.

I would appreciate any recommendation(s) from anyone :slight_smile:

Saviour has come to save Nigerian businesses lots of money
:bicyclist: :bicyclist: <= :runner: :runner: :runner: <= :walking: :walking: :walking: :walking: :walking:

2 Likes

Hahahaā€¦Thatā€™s funny :joy: .But bro know say we dey recession na so anything that can keep some change in the pocket would actually help.

The system though is not just for businesses, individual are also registered and can get supplies of lower range. e.g 500 litres for their homes

Nice one though, didnā€™t see that one coming. But am no saviour oooā€¦

:thumbsup:

Nice idea.
I think you should strongly consider a responsive site in place of the app.
Good to have an app, but better to have both app and web for this sort of product where early adopters are needed.

I know a bit about people who like to install any app on their phones and they are not usually the type of people looking to spend the kind of money your app is about.

1 Like

U get it ti!

Thank you sir, Iā€™ll start work on this as soon as today!

Look at thisā€¦